Google is spending more than $1 billion to expand operations in New York City.
Ruth Porat, senior vice president and chief financial officer at Google and Alphabet, said in a blog post Monday that Google is creating a more than 1.7 million square-foot campus that includes lease agreements along the Hudson River in lower Manhattan. Google Hudson Square will be the company’s primary location for its New York operations.
“New York City continues to be a great source of diverse, world-class talent—that’s what brought Google to the city in 2000 and that’s what keeps us here,” she wrote.
“Earlier this year, we announced the $2.4 billion purchase of the Manhattan Chelsea Market and shared plans to lease additional space at Pier 57. We hope to start moving into the two Hudson Street buildings by 2020, followed by 550 Washington Street in 2022 once the building is complete. Google Hudson Square will be the primary location for our New York-based Global Business Organization. ”
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Google put its first office in New York nearly 20 years ago, and already has more than 7,000 employees in the city. The company has continued to build up its New York presence, announcing earlier this year that it was buying the Manhattan Chelsea Market building for $2.4 billion and planned to lease more space at Pier 57.
Google hopes to move into the new campus by 2020.
Google’s plan to expand is being announced a month after Amazon said it would put one of its second headquarter locations in New York’s Long Island City neighborhood, creating upward of 25,000 jobs in the region.
Amazon, Google and other tech giants like Facebook are expanding beyond the traditional stomping ground of Silicon Valley, hungry for highly trained engineers and other staff that can support expansion.
The Northeast is proving to be a good match, with a strong base of higher education and a concentration of younger, educated workers from Boston to Manhattan. But it’s not just the Northeast.
Apple last week announced plans to build a $1 billion campus in Austin, Texas, that will create at least 5,000 jobs.
The bidding for programmers is driving salaries higher, which in turn is catapulting the average prices of homes in many parts of the San Francisco Bay Area above $1 million. Many high-tech workers are thus choosing to live elsewhere, causing major tech employers such as Apple, Amazon and Google to look in new places for the employees they need to pursue their future ambitions.
Google has more than 7,000 workers in New York and Facebook has more than 2,000. According to official statistics, tech sector employment in the New York grew by 65 percent to reach an estimated 134,700 from 2010 to 2017.
Google hopes to move into the new campus by 2020.
Porat said that the company’s most recent investments gives it the ability to more than double the number of Google workers in New York over the next 10 years.
“With these most recent investments in Google Chelsea and Google Hudson Square, we will have the capacity to more than double the number of Googlers in New York over the next 10 years,” Porat said.
“Our investment in New York is a huge part of our commitment to grow and invest in U.S. facilities, offices and jobs. In fact, we’re growing faster outside the Bay Area than within it, and this year opened new offices and data centers in locations like Detroit, Boulder, Los Angeles, Tennessee and Alabama. And as we continue to grow across the country, we look forward to calling New York City home for many years to come.”
Read more from Google about the expansion online.
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