Google will spend more than $1 billion on a major Manhattan real estate expansion, a move that could add more than 7,000 jobs in the next several years.
The search giant made the announcement Monday morning in a blog post.
The new campus, Google Hudson Square, will be more than 1.7 million square feet and located at 315 and 345 Hudson St. It will be the primary location for its New York-based Global Business Organization. A signed letter of intent was also signed for 550 Washington St. in the West Village.
The company hopes to move into the Hudson Street offices by 2020 and the Washington Street building by 2022.
Unlike Amazon, which recently announced it would be moving its second headquarters to Long Island City, Queens, and is getting billions of dollars in tax breaks, Google will not be taking incentives from the city. And so far, there is no community outrage or protests. Greg David of Crain's New York Business said the city provides incentives for business that go to boroughs outside Manhattan, and "we tend not to provide incentives for companies that in Manhattan."
"We've been working on a moment like this for the last 10 years," said Ellen Baer of the Hudson Square Business Improvement District. "To convert this neighborhood from an industrial printing district into a mixed-use neighborhood where people are creating things and innovating."
"I think it will be a great thing because there are a lot of people that are going to work there and have lunch here and enjoy us," said Tania Bottecchia of the Nonna Beppa restaurant nearby.
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Google put its first office in New York nearly 20 years ago, and already has more than 7,000 employees in the city.
Earlier this year, the tech giant announced the $2.4 billion purchase of the Manhattan Chelsea Market and shared plans to lease additional space at Pier 57.
Amazon, Google and other tech giants like Facebook are expanding beyond the traditional stomping ground of Silicon Valley, hungry for highly trained engineers and other staff that can support expansion.
The Northeast is proving to be a good match, with a strong base of higher education and a concentration of younger, educated workers from Boston to Manhattan.
Google, along with Amazon, "will make New York a rival to Silicon Valley as the most important tech center in the country," said Greg David.
But it's not just the Northeast.
Apple last week announced plans to build a $1 billion campus in Austin, Texas, that will create at least 5,000 jobs.
The bidding for programmers is driving salaries higher, which in turn is catapulting the average prices of homes in many parts of the San Francisco Bay Area above $1 million. Many high-tech workers are thus choosing to live elsewhere, causing major tech employers such as Apple, Amazon and Google to look in new places for the employees they need to pursue their future ambitions.
According to official statistics, tech sector employment in the New York grew by 65 percent to reach an estimated 134,700 from 2010 to 2017.
Porat said that the company's most recent investments gives it the ability to more than double the number of Google workers in New York over the next 10 years.
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