Google plans $25 million investment in Georgia

Tech giant to move into Midtown office tower being constructed.

Google will invest $25 million in Georgia as it expands operations in the state, including its plan to move into a new Midtown office tower.

The money will support construction of the tower and retrofitting its existing Douglas County data center, the Mountain View, California-based company said in a statement.

Google is expected to move into 150,000 square feet of office space, or five floors, next year at the 1105 West Peachtree building under construction. Later, the company plans to expand into an additional 14 floors.

The tech giant said in 2019 it planned to move into the new building, but had not disclosed the size of its investment in the state before Tuesday’s announcement.

A teetering crane working on 1105 West peach tree last month prompted officials to evacuate nearby buildings for safety reasons, including hundreds of apartment and condo residents. It took crews days to disassemble the malfunctioned crane.

Google’s Atlanta expansion is part of a $7 billion nationwide expansion by the company this year, which includes hiring 10,000 new fulltime workers. A company spokeswoman declined to provide a breakout of how many new jobs Google will create in Atlanta this year.

Atlanta has rival suitors on the East Coast for future Google projects. Google said last week that it will boost the size of its investments and hire more workers at existing offices in Boston, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C.

Google’s Pittsburgh office has 760 workers, including engineers who work on computer cloud platforms, artificial intelligence, machine learning and data center software, according to the Pittsburgh Post-gazette. That compares to 610 employees at Google’s two Atlanta locations, at the 10 10th St. building in Midtown staffed with sales teams, and its data center in Lithia Springs.