Google village development partner trims staff
Lendlease restructures, makes cuts in wake of search giant's layoffs
Google's principal real estate partner for several new Bay Area neighborhoods — including a downtown San Jose transit village whose development timing is being reassessed — has trimmed its staff levels.
Australia-based Lendlease has confirmed that it has restructured and trimmed staff in the wake of Google's disclosures of 12,000 layoffs that include 1,600 job cuts in the Bay Area, as well as a reassessment by the search giant of the timeline for its future mixeduse neighborhood near the Diridon train station and SAP Center in downtown San Jose.
“In order to align our resources to the market, we are in the process of reorganizing, including reductions to our Google Development Ventures business,” a Lendlease spokesperson said in comments the global real estate development and services company emailed to this news organization.
The primary Bay Area districts in which Lendlease provides development services for Google consist of four areas: one in downtown San Jose, two in Mountain View and one in Sunnyvale.
“We remain committed, as Google's development partner, in the creation of thriving mixed-use communities in the Bay Area,” a spokesperson for Lendlease said in the email comments.
The Bay Area projects involving the Google and Lendlease partnership, even in their early phases, are slated to bring dramatic changes to the respective neighborhoods where they
would sprout:
• Downtown West, in downtown San Jose, would create a new neighborhood with up to 7.3 million square feet of offices; 4,000 to 5,900 housing units; up to 500,000 square feet of retail, restaurants, cultural, entertainment and art centers; 100,000 square feet of event space; up to 300 hotel rooms; 15 acres of parks and open space; and infrastructure and utilities, including a new energy plant. Google could employ up to 25,000 tech workers in Downtown West.
• North Bayshore in
Mountain View, which would include up to 7,000 new homes, of which up to 1,400 would be affordable, as well as offices, restaurants, shops and extensive parklands and nature areas.
• Moffett Park in northern Sunnyvale, where city officials envision up to 20,000 homes and up to 8 million square feet of new office space on parcels of varying sizes that are owned by Google, developer Jay Paul Co., defense and aerospace titan Lockheed Martin and others.
• Middlefield Park in
Mountain View would consist of up to 1,900 homes, of which up to 380 would be affordable, along with new offices, shops, restaurants and open spaces.
“We remain active on the Google neighborhoods and maintain a significant team to aid in delivering these communities,” the Lendlease spokesperson stated.
These remaining Lendlease staffers include people working on the Downtown West project, which could be a game-changer for San Jose's economy and business climate when its first phase begins.
However, Google has begun a reassessment of the Downtown West neighborhood at the same time the tech titan has begun to scale back the office space it occupies in the Bay Area and worldwide.
“We're assessing how to best move forward with Downtown West,” Sheela Jivan, Google's Downtown West Development Director, said in recent comments to this news organization.
The city's approval of the Downtown West neighborhood was accompanied by Google's agreement to provide an array of community benefits to San Jose.
In May 2022, Google completed an early payment of $7.5 million for a community benefits program. The company will pay the rest of the public benefits as the Downtown West development proceeds. All told, the community benefits package totals $200 million.
Google was expected to begin infrastructure installations this year to serve the project. The company has also begun demolishing multiple buildings just south of the train station, including long-time watering hole Patty's Inn.
Despite the reassessment, Google intends to push ahead with Downtown West.
“We're still committed to San Jose for the long term and believe in the importance of the development,” Jivan said.