Google’s Expanding Silicon Valley Footprint To Rival Apple, Facebook
Google has been buying up land and proposing large developments throughout Silicon Valley. The tech giant rapidly expanded its real estate footprint in 2017 and will grow this year with new projects and additional acquisitions. Three proposed projects will add nearly 10M SF to Google’s portfolio in addition to the 50 parcels worth $1B Google bought throughout Sunnyvale in 2017.
Check out what Google has been up to and its various projects in the works below:
Caribbean
Location: 100 and 200 West Caribbean Drive, Sunnyvale
Proposed Size: 1.04M SF
Google’s latest proposed project, designed by Bjarke Ingels Group, would create an over 1M SF office in Sunnyvale, dubbed Caribbean. The two-building project would have a five-story building with 505K SF and another building with 538K SF.
The buildings will feature sloped roofs that will create ramps for Google employees to use to travel between the building’s levels outside. The offices could be filled with up to 4,500 employees in 2021, the earliest Google expects the 40.5-acre project to be completed. The project will be close to Moffett Field and across the street from Yahoo’s headquarters.
Charleston East
Location: North Bayshore, Mountain View
Proposed Size: 595K SF
Google’s first ground-up development, which was approved in March, will be a two-story canopy project made possible after a land swap with LinkedIn in 2016. The project was designed by Bjarke Ingels Group and Thomas Heatherwick. Mountain View’s approval of the North Bayshore Precise Plan in December paved the way for up to 10,000 housing units to be built by Google and other developers as well as 3.6M SF of commercial space.
Diridon Station
Location: Diridon Station, San Jose
Proposed Size: 6M SF to 8M SF
Google’s proposed San Jose campus has sparked significant investor interest in properties in downtown San Jose even though the campus is many years out. So far, Google has been buying up parcels around Diridon Station through developer partner TC Agoge Associates, an entity of Trammell Crow. The developer and tech company have spent over $150M on two dozen properties around Diridon Station as of early January.
San Jose's city council also approved the exclusive sale of 16 city- and municipal-owned parcels within the Diridon Station area. The initial plans for the campus include up to 8M SF of office that could accommodate 15,000 to 20,000 workers. The project may also include 3,000 housing units.
