Santa Barbara-based cloud computing company RightScale has just leased new corporate headquarters at 402 E. Gutierrez St., a 26,336 sf space that is nearly twice the size of the company’s current space. The rapidly growing company has been headquartered at 136 W. Canon Perdido St. since early 2009. By square footage, this is the largest new office lease in downtown Santa Barbara in more than six years. It’s also one of the 20 largest new office leases on Santa Barbara County’s South Coast since 2006.

Michael Martz and Steve Hayes of Hayes Commercial Group were engaged by RightScale to conduct a comprehensive search for a larger office space to facilitate its rapid growth.

“The emphasis was on Santa Barbara to allow RightScale to maintain their corporate headquarters in the downtown business district,” said Michael Martz, partner at Hayes Commercial Group. “However, with limited options of spaces 25,000 square feet or larger, we had to get creative and consider securing multiple downtown buildings within close proximity as well as expanding the search to Carpinteria and Goleta. We were delighted to be able to secure 402 E. Gutierrez, allowing RightScale to remain in Santa Barbara. It will be a benefit to local downtown business to have such a large employer remain in Santa Barbara. “

Until now, the Santa Barbara Business & Technology Center has been the master tenant at 402 E. Gutierrez St., which served as an “incubator” office building, offering short-term leases for multiple spaces typically occupied by small organizations and start-ups.

“In the search for large downtown office spaces, we became aware that the ownership of 402 E. Gutierrez was open to leasing to a single tenant,” said Steve Hayes, partner at Hayes Commercial Group. “The silver lining for the small tenants who will be displaced is that the recent downturn in the economy has created numerous choices for small office tenants to consider. There will be a trickledown effect that will allow lots of small spaces to be leased up very quickly.”

Founded in 2006, RightScale offers a fully automated cloud management platform that manages applications across multiple clouds. To date, more than two million servers have been launched on the RightScale platform for leading organizations such as PBS, Harvard University, Zynga and Sling Media. The company also has offices in Singapore and London, with more than 150 employees worldwide.