We Don't Know What Facebook Is Unveiling Next Week, But It Could Be Its Big New Campus

Facebook has announced a surprise media event on January 15 that has everyone guessing.

The invitation said simply: "See what we're building."

The word "building" made some gadget hounds speculate about hardware. But CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said very clearly that he believes building a phone is the wrong strategy for Facebook.

But we do know one multimillion-dollar object that Facebook is in the process of building.

That's the new 2,800-person campus across the highway from its current home in Menlo Park. The single-building Campus West isn't quite on the scale of Apple's gigantic starship headquarters, but it will be big enough to house most of Facebook's engineers under one roof.

In September, Facebook began environmental-remediation work on the site—work that should be wrapping up shortly, if it's not already completed.

And according to the official project timetable, negotiations with the city should wrap up around January 14.

From there, a series of hearings are scheduled for February and March.

We don't know what to make of the coincidental dates, but it's certainly interesting. We asked Facebook for updates on the project, but haven't heard back. Rachel Grossman, an associate planner with the City of Menlo Park, confirmed in a voicemail that the project is on track with the published project schedule.