Snapchat to lease part of Santa Monica Airport, including 8 hangars

Reuters

Snapchat has expanded out of its beloved Venice Beach neighborhood and into an airport.

The Santa Monica City Council approved a $3 million-a-year lease for Snapchat to take over space at the Santa Monica Airport, which includes two buildings and eight hangars, according to the Santa Monica Mirror. Snapchat declined to comment.

The five-year lease gives Snapchat room to expand into the two office buildings, totaling 70,473 square feet, although it has to spend at least $1.4 million in improvements on them.

The deal also includes eight hangars, totaling 8,900 square feet of space. It's unclear if Snapchat actually intends to use them to store aircraft — its CEO, Evan Spiegel, is a helicopter pilot, after all — or whether they will also be converted into office space for the company as it rapidly expands.

Snapchat has been on a real-estate tear recently, snapping up buildings further inland in Venice and now its neighboring Santa Monica Airport. Rather than building a central campus, like you see with Facebook, Google, and Apple, Snapchat's office buildings are sprawling and tucked throughout Venice Beach.

Its first official office was a bright-blue beach house, but the company quickly outgrew it and expanded into a 6,000-square-foot space at 63 Market St. and two more buildings nearby.

In January 2015, it leased an additional 25,000 square feet at the Thornton Lofts. Its latest major land grab came in May 2015, when the messaging app signed a 10-year lease for a 47,000-square-foot office complex in Venice, California.

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