Google hits pause on suburban Seattle campus after job cuts

SEATTLE — Google has halted its plan to construct a fourth building for its Kirkland campus, according to a research report.

The Broderick Group, which monitors commercial real estate in Seattle and Bellevue, noted the pause in its quarterly report of the Eastside office market.

Google spokesman Ryan Lamont did not confirm or deny the news but said: “We’re working to ensure our real estate investments meet the current and future needs of our hybrid workforce.”

“Our campuses are at the heart of our Google community, and we remain committed to our long-term presence in Kirkland.”

Google had planned a 760,000-square-foot campus with four buildings in Kirkland. It opened the north building in April 2021 and the second phase of the project in 2022 with a splashy eight-storey building in Kirkland Urban that featured a dog lounge, movie theatre and kitchenettes on almost every floor.

At the time, it planned to open another building in 2023 and the last in 2025.

Now, Google has completed construction on the south building but has opted not to “build out the space” and to pause its plans for a fourth building in the complex, according to the report from the Broderick Group.

Google also removed Tableau, a software company owned by Salesforce, from 120,000 square feet of space on its campus that Tableau had hoped to sublease. Google has also not built out that space, the Broderick Group said.

Lamont did not disclose how many employees Google currently has in Kirkland and how many had been slated for the fourth building that is now on pause.

Google shed 12,000 jobs, or six per cent of its workforce, in January 2023. The company also laid off hundreds of workers at the start of the year, though it’s not clear how those job cuts affected Google’s workforce in Seattle and Kirkland.

The Eastside office market overall has an 18.2 per cent vacancy rate, compared with a rate of 5.7 per cent in 2019, the report said. Tenant demand this year has exceeded the norm in the first quarter, the report said.