Same here. In a way, location can be thought of to be one of the most concrete parts of office culture. In NYC, where I've spent a lot of my work life, it's amazing how much of a proxy office location was for founder style. For some founders, a chic location wasn't prioritized or seen as ROI positive. For others, it was the exact opposite.
All I can say is that for the former category, the value-add generally far outweighed the outlay for a very crucial and formative period of its life. At a certain size, logistical concerns like price per square foot and available commercial inventory become a lot more pressing concerns.
This has extra benefits too. You don't want to turn the office into a bar for quite obvious reasons, but having it in the office makes it convenient. A lot of senior will skip off-site events because they have a family to go back to. But one beer and leave? Sure.
Why speak in absolutes when it absolutely is not conveying a shared message.
I run process oriented companies
Would I add a beer keg-refrigerator aka "kegerator" to keep some 25 year olds from considering other companies for 3 months longer than they would anyway? sure
Would I allow the work place to be used as a surrogate for their social causes? no - actually maybe if it needed to court advertisers all the time, but otherwise no because that was not the point of the business entity.
Would I hire an operations person to plan social things for employees to look forward to because I don't care about that at all? maaaaaaaaaybe
I never needed that stuff, clock in, clock out, nobody is really on the clock just meet your goals
For me, location is more important. What can you do in walking distance after work? I tend to keep my social circles separate, I don't want my colleagues or employees around.
The jobs I loathed the most had car-only commutes to office parks.
The jobs I enjoyed the most were in trendy parts of towns.
I think the people that attracts are heavily correlated and makes the culture on its own.