What you need to know
- Google is buying an office building in New York's Manhattan district for $2.1 billion.
- The building, which is currently under construction, is set to open in mid-2023.
- Google expects the transaction to close in the fourth quarter of 2022.
Google is purchasing the St. John's Terminal in Manhattan for $2.1 billion to serve as the anchor of its new Hudson Square campus. The announcement was made in a blog post by Alphabet and Google CFO Ruth Porat.
This isn't the first time that Google has bought an office building in Manhattan. It purchased the former Port Authority building at 15th Street and 9th Avenue in 2010 for $1.9 billion. In 2018, the company purchased the Chelsea Market building for $2.4 billion.
Despite embracing the new work-from-home culture, Google appears to be continuing to increase investment in office space. The company believes that coming together in person to collaborate will remain an integral part of its future.
The St. John's Terminal site is expected to open by mid-2023 and will be Google's largest office outside California. Google says it has made "substantial progress" in building out its 1.7 million-square-foot Hudson Square campus, which will serve as the New York headquarters for its Global Business Organization.
A former freight facility, St. John's Terminal is currently being reimagined into a sustainable and connected building with a biophilic design. It will feature a number of outdoor spaces and also reconnect the Hudson Square neighborhood to the waterfront.
Google expects the investment to give it the capacity to increase its workforce in New York City to more than 14,000 employees in the coming years. The search giant currently has around 12,000 employees in New York City, working in different offices across Manhattan.
Last month, Google decided to push back mandatory office return for its employees to January 10, 2022. Until January 10, it is optional for Google employees to work on campus. Like Google, other tech giants such as Facebook and Apple have also told their employees that they won't have to go back to offices until at least January next year.
