Google is following Amazons major investment in New York City and Apples pledge to build a new campus outside of Silicon Valley with its own blueprint for a new $1 billion campus in Lower Manhattan.
The move was announced in a blog post by Ruth Porat, SVP and CFO of Google and its parent company, Alphabet. She described it as “the next step in our commitment to our New York City presence.”
The new campus will span 1.7 million square feet of office space, with lease agreements at 315 and 345 Hudson St. (in a popular media and ad-industry neighborhood) and a signed letter of intent at 550 Washington St. The company plans to occupy the Hudson Street offices by 2020, and Washington Street by 2022. Google also paid $2.4 billion earlier this year for Chelsea Market, a converted factory space that has been home to a thriving retail and restaurant cluster as well as media companies like Food Network and the MLB Network.
The company has not specified a target number of jobs to go along with its New York expansion, but the Wall Street Journal last month said Google was eyeing a new facility capable of housing 12,000 workers.
“When we came to New York City almost two decades ago, it was our first office outside of California,” Porat wrote. “Its now home to more than 7,000 employees, speaking 50 languages, working on a broad range of teams including Search, Ads, Maps, YouTube, Cloud, Technical Infrastructure, Sales, Partnerships and Research. New York City continues to be a great source of diverse, world-class talent—thats what brought Google to the city in 2000 and thats what keeps us here.”
Across the total Hudson Square and Chelsea footprint, Porat said, the total number of New York-based employees will more than double in the next 10 years. She also noted the companys new offices and data centers in locations like LA, Detroit, Colorado, Tennessee and Alabama.
Amazon selected New York City and Arlington, VA to share its new corporate headquarters. The move, which will bring 25,000 jobs to each city, prompted a backlash among some New York civic leaders and activists, who characterized it as boondoggle favoring white-collar jobs over infrastructure improvements and affordable housing. Apple said last week it would build a new $1 billion campus in Austin as well as expanding into several new U.S. cities.
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