Macys.com, one of San Francisco's fastest growing technology tenants, has leased 250,000 square feet at 680 Folsom St. in the South of Market, the latest in a series of mega-leases that provides bricks-and-mortar evidence of the city's dramatic economic recovery.

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee is expected to announce the lease at a press conference Thursday morning. The deal is the second largest lease of the year in San Francisco, trailing only Salesforce's 400,000 square foot deal at 50 Fremont St.

"I am thrilled that we have reached this milestone of more than one million square feet of office space leased by technology firms in just the first two months of 2012.," said Lee. "We are moving forward and relentlessly focusing on job creation here in our City and reaffirming that San Francisco is the 'Innovation Capital of the World.'"

Macy's online division will occupy the top seven floors of the old telephone building, which TMG Partners is in the process of revamping with a $87 million renovation. Macys.com (NYSE: M) will join Riverbed Technology (NASDAQ: RVBD) in the building.

Macys.com currently occupies about 95,000 square feet of office space at 685 Market St. near Union Square for its site development and operations organization. The company's San Francisco offices currently are midway through a two-year program to add about 225 new positions. This will take the workforce to more than 550 employees by the end of 2012 from about 325 at the beginning of 2011.

In November, 2011 a spokesman for Macys.com told the Business Times the retailer's business "continues to grow very quickly."

"The company's online sales are up by 40 percent so far this year to date — and we expect to continue to expand our San Francisco workforce with new talent to maintain the momentum," stated spokesman Jim Sluzewski.

Technology companies in San Francisco say they will hire in excess of 8,000 people in the city this year, according to a survey of done by a new industry group called San Francisco Citizens Initiative for Technology & Innovation (sf.citi).

This week Sf.citi Chairman Ron Conway the influential early stage technology investor, told the audience at the annual CityBeat breakfast that he had expected at most to find hiring plans totaling several thousand jobs among sf.citi's 125 member companies.

"I was thinking the answer would be two or three thousand, and I was going to go to (Mayor) Ed Lee and brag about that. It's like 8,000 new jobs this year and counting," said Conway onstage at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis.

Macys.com was represented by veteran San Francisco broker Daniel Cressman. Chris Roeder and Gregg Walker of Jones Lang LaSalle repped TMG Partners.