拯救大型购中心{1}

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THE old Rackspace headquarters was stuffed to the gills. In 2007 the company, which offers cloud-computing and web-hosting services, had more than 1,000 employees in downtown San Antonio. People were crammed at folding tables in the hallway. They often had to go to a different building or shuttle around the lifts to talk to people in other departments.

Rackspace公司总部的旧楼曾人满为患。 该公司提供云计算和主机托管服务，2007年在圣安东尼奥市区已拥有1000多名员工。 公司走廊里放了很多折叠桌，连这里都挤满了人。 要是想找其他部门的人谈点事，都得跑到另一栋楼或者坐几个来回的升降梯才行。

Still, when Graham Weston, the company’s co-founder and chairman, suggested that they move into a shopping mall, staff were sceptical. The mall was vacant. Its site, the encircled suburb of Windcrest, was slightly grotty, not least because of the huge dead mall right off the highway.

即便如此，当公司的创建人之一兼主席Graham Weston表示他们要搬到一家购物中心时，员工们都还将信将疑。 那时候商场是空置的， 地点位于Windcrest这个被包围着的郊区，外观不太好看，相当重要的原因是这座空无一人的大型商场正位于公路的出口处。

Building a campus from scratch, however, would have taken several years at least. Anyway, the place was cheap. “Nobody wants a mall any more,” says John Engates, the chief technology officer. Except Rackspace, and others like it, who have come to see a dead mall as a blank canvas. In 2008 it opened its new headquarters, and won a prize for community economic development. Now it has more than 3,000 workers on site, withplans to hire hundreds more by the end of the year.

不过要想从零开始建立一座办公楼至少得花上几年的时间， 而且不管怎么说，用现成的购物中心是比较省钱的作法。 “现在已经没人想要购物中心了”技术总监John Engates说到。 如今只有Rackspace，和其余像它那样把空置商城看作是一张空白画布的公司对购物中心还有好感。 2008年Rackspace的新总部投入使用，还得了一项“社会经济发展”奖。 如今，现场的员工有3000多人，计划到今年年底还要雇用几百人。