Facebook, which has been filling up 5 offices on University and Hamilton in downtown Palo Alto with its now over 600 employees (and reaching close to 1000 by year’s end), today announced that the company is moving to an old HP/Agilent building just off of California Ave a couple miles away in Palo Alto.

While many had speculated the company would move to San Francisco, Facebook’s Debbie Frost told the Palo Alto Daily News that the company wants to stay close to its downtown Palo Alto home, since so many employees live nearby.

“We have loved our time in downtown Palo Alto and consider it part of the DNA here at Facebook. Many of our employees live in the area and will continue to be a part of the downtown community,” according to her e-mail statement… “The motivation behind the move was the need to scale the organization while taking into account employee preferences to be located together as much as possible.”

Facebook will move to 1601 California Ave, Palo Alto, a 152,000 square foot facility in Stanford Research Park, in the first quarter of 2009.