Google buys buildings, land from NetApp

Tech giant adds $210.3M Sunnyvale purchase to property acquisitions

SUNNYVALE >> Extending an eye-popping shopping spree for property, Google has paid just over $210 million for buildings, land and a parking garage in Sunnyvale that had been owned by NetApp.

The search giant’s $210.3 million transaction was completed Thursday, Santa Clara County property records show. Google’s Sunnyvale property purchase includes three NetApp office buildings — two on East Java Drive and one on Crossman Avenue; a parking garage that fronts Geneva Drive; and some or all of a big stretch of empty land on Geneva Drive, county recorder’s and assessor’s files show.

The properties are situated on a mega-block in Sunnyvale — bounded by East Java Drive, Geneva Drive, Caribbean Drive and Crossman Avenue — suggesting that Google could be well on its way to creating a campus there. This block is adjacent to, or near, dozens of other properties in Sunnyvale that Google bought this year.

All told, Google has spent around $1 billion buying buildings and land in Sunnyvale this year.

Mountain View-based Google and Sunnyvale-based NetApp struck a deal on Sept. 11 for the property sales, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that month.

The acquisitions consisted of a 127,000-square-foot building at 495 E. Java Drive, a 133,000-square-foot building at 475 E. Java Drive and a 121,000-square-foot building at 1330 Geneva Drive, the SEC documents stated.

any detail in the SEC filing was the ownership transfer to Google of a portion, or all, of a big piece of vacant land at 1350 Geneva Drive, which has a construction entrance sign posted on it.

The search giant will rent to NetApp one of the buildings for an unspecified “limited term,” according to the SEC filing.

Google appears to be moving briskly to occupy additional buildings.

Google’s latest property purchases follow its acquisition of about 45 buildings in the same Moffett

Park district of Sunnyvale, and two small buildings in September.

So far in 2017, Google has spent roughly $1.05 billion to scoop up properties in this part of Sunnyvale alone.

“Google just has a continued appetite for large amounts of space,” said Erik Hallgrimson, an executive managing director with Cushman & Wakefield, a commercial realty brokerage. “Google controls most of Moffett Park at this point.”

Still, all of this activity in Sunnyvale is just one facet of Google’s Silicon Valley expansion plans.

The company has been buying and leasing buildings

and property, and sketching out development plans, near its Googleplex headquarters in northern Mountain View.

And Google and its development ally Trammell Crow are buying properties in a downtown San Jose neighborhood of offices, shops, older industrial buildings and empty parcels. It aims to build a transit-oriented Google village near the Diridon train station and SAP entertainment center.

The tech giant hopes to build 6 million to 8 million square feet of offices as the primary feature of the transit village on the west side of downtown San Jose, where 15,000 to

20,000 Google employees could work.

Beyond what Google has already purchased in Sunnyvale, the tech titan has approached multiple Sunnyvale property owners about obtaining their properties, according to David Vanoncini, a senior vice president and managing partner with commercial realty brokerage Kidder Mathews.

“It’s anybody’s guess what Google ultimately chooses to do with the entire Moffett Park area,” Hallgrimson said. “It could very well be a new master-planned community for them.”

Contact George Avalos at 408-859-5167.