Will Tech Go Vertical?
We believe that question has been soundly answered by Salesforce’s record-breaking 714k SF lease (news which Bisnow broke on March 3) at the future 61- story Transbay Tower in San Francisco, the new landmark of that city.
What will put this whole trend on steroids would be if Google, which is on the market in Manhattan for 600k SF, leases or buys a tower. (if only Google knew someone who was good with searches). It would be its fourth Manhattan location, but the tech giant faces a problem. Since buying the 2.9M SF 111 Eighth Ave in 2010 for $1.8B, smaller tech companies gravitated to the neighborhood. Google can't even occupy the entire building as its existing tenants don't want to leave. A miniscule number of blocks of space leave the company few choices but to partner with developers to spark construction on planned buildings in the massive Far West Side or World Trade Center areas or to take space in the recently completed 1 WTC or 4 WTC, Avison Young's Greg Kraut (above) tells us. All those options would put the hip owner of Silicon Valley's Googleplex in decidedly more institutional settings. Or, it could JV with a developer on a build-to-suit on a parking lot or old warehouse site near its Chelsea/Meatpacking District NY HQ.
