Google to spend $1B on new NYC complex
Silicon Valley is becoming Silicon Nation.
Google is planning a major expansion in New York City, announcing Monday it will spend more than $1 billion on a new office complex that will allow the internet search giant to double the number of people it employs there.
The move follows similar steps by Amazon and Apple to set up operations well outside their home areas. Hungry for engineers and other employees, tech companies are aggressively expanding beyond the SeattleSan Francisco corridor.
The Northeast is proving to be a good match, with its large concentration of highly educated young people from Boston to New York.
Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., will fashion a complex exceeding 1.7 million square feet along the Hudson River in the city’s West Village neighborhood, Ruth Porat, senior vice president and chief financial officer, said in a blog post.
Google opened its first office in New York nearly 20 years ago and now employs 7,000 people in the city. Its footprint has expanded continuously.
The company also said this year that it would buy the Manhattan Chelsea Market building for $2.4 billion and planned to lease more space at Pier 57. Both are along the Hudson about a mile north of the newly announced complex.
Google is expanding elsewhere, too. This year it opened new offices and data centers in cities including Detroit, Boulder, Colo., and Los Angeles, as well as in such states as Tennessee and Alabama.
Google hopes to move into the expanded New York City campus by 2020.
Porat said that the company’s most recent investments give it the ability to more than double the number of Google employees in New York over the next 10 years.