Google joins tech move east, to invest US$1 bln in New York campus

WASHINGTON: Google became the latest US tech giant to announce a major expansion plan, unveiling a US$1 billion investment Monday to create a new campus that could double its New York City workforce to 14,000.

The move by Google comes following Amazon’s announcement of new headquarters sites in New York and suburban Washington DC worth some US$5 billion, and Apple’s US$1 billion expansion to Texas and other areas.

Google parent Alphabet’s chief financial officer Ruth Porat said it would lease large office buildings in lower Manhattan, which will become the centrepiece of a campus of more than 1.7 million square feet (160,000 square meters).

The new campus, which should be operational starting in 2020, will be known as Google Hudson Square and “will be the primary location for our New York-based Global Business Organisation,” Porat wrote in a blog post.

“New York City continues to be a great source of diverse, worldclass talent – that’s what brought Google to the city in 2000 and that’s what keeps us here,” she said.

Alphabet earlier this year said it was buying the Manhattan Chelsea Market for US$2.4 billion, and planned to lease space at Pier 57 on the Hudson river.

The company currently employs some 7,000 people in New York. “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.

She said the company’s “investment in New York is a huge part of our commitment to grow and invest in US facilities, offices and jobs.” The new site is a former industrial area adjacent to the Greenwich Village and Soho districts.

The expansion would make California-based Alphabet one of the city’s largest commercial tenants, The Wall Street Journal reported.