Google moves into tech campus where thousands may work
Google has moved into another big San Jose campus, greatly widening its foothold in the Bay Area's largest city in a shift that shows the search giant seeks ways to expand in places even as it reassesses other office space.
The tech titan now operates in at least three of four buildings on West Tasman Drive near Champion Court in a new office hub Google calls its Tasman Campus.
The expansion represents at least the second major campus in San Jose where Google has quietly moved employees and begun work operations.
In April, Google confirmed it had moved into two big office buildings on Brokaw Road between North First Street and Bering Drive. The buildings are two of four that total a combined 729,000 square feet that Google leased from Peery Arrillaga in 2019.
The leased buildings have addresses of 122 East Brokaw Road and 1849 Bering Drive. As of late April, Google had yet to occupy the other two buildings in that cluster.
In the company's most recent expansion in San Jose, Google has moved into at least three of four buildings the tech titan purchased in 2020 from Cisco Systems.
In 2020, Google paid $164.2 million for the quartet of buildings and an adjacent parking garage. The buildings have addresses of 175, 225, 255, and 285 West Tasman Drive in North San Jose. The new Google campus is near the light rail line's Champion Station.
The buildings that Google bought from Cisco, which were constructed more than two decades ago in 1996, total a combined 553,000 square feet. That is enough space to accommodate 2,200 to 2,800 Google workers.
Google opened its Tasman Campus at the end of 2022, a Google spokesperson said.
These two Google office hub expansions in North San Jose come at a time when uncertainties have emerged regarding when Google will launch the construction of a planned transit village next to the Diridon train station and SAP Center in downtown San Jose.
“While we're assessing our real estate footprint, we're still committed to San Jose for the long term and continuing to invest in the community and our long-term presence here,” a Google spokesperson said.
The decision by Google to open a second campus in North San Jose bolsters the city's local economy, in the view of Bob Staedler, principal executive with Silicon Valley Synergy, a land-use consultancy.
“Google's Tasman Campus is good news for San Jose,” Staedler said. “It's great to see these buildings being used and not sitting vacant.”
Separately, Mountain Viewbased Google says that it is “reassessing the timeline” for the mixed-use downtown San Jose neighborhood, known as Downtown West, that the company is planning.
The reassessment of the Downtown West timelines is a characterization Google has made several times to this news organization going back to February of this year. The most recent such update to reaffirm the ongoing assessment of the timeline was made by Google in late April.
But the tech titan also said recently that it remains fully committed to the downtown San Jose development.
Google's Downtown West neighborhood would add millions of square feet of new offices, thousands of homes, and shops and restaurants to the western edges of the city's downtown district.
The two huge new office hubs where Google is now operating serve as a reminder that the company's growth continues even in the face of layoffs, a wideranging reassessment of the company's office and space requirements and the uncertainty over the Downtown West timeline.
JLL, a commercial real estate firm, recently conducted
a series of roundtable discussions with 50 companies in the Bay Area to gain insight regarding changes in their approaches to returning to their workplaces in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Companies want to move from mandates to magnets,” said Bart Lammersen, an executive managing director with JLL. “They want to do more than mandate a return. They want the offices to be magnets so employees want to
return.”
Efforts are underway by tech companies to make offices more appealing to workers.
“Companies want to support ways for their people to be invested in the office again,” said LV Hanson, a JLL senior vice president.