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Google paid over $2 Billion for NYC office building, Amazon and Facebook also invested heavily in office space: is this a sign that workers will be told to return to the office?

October 23, 2021
Sustainability

Search giant Google is buying the St. John’s Terminal building in Manhattan’s Hudson Square for $2.1 billion, the company announced on Tuesday morning.

In a company blog post, Ruth Porat, Alphabet and Google CFO, wrote, “Google has been fortunate to call New York City home for more than 20 years, during which time we have grown to 12,000 employees. New York’s vitality, creativity and world-class talent are what keep us rooted here. It is why we’re announcing today that we are deepening our commitment to New York and intend to purchase the St. John’s Terminal in Manhattan for $2.1 billion, which will serve as the anchor of our new Hudson Square campus.”

Porat pointed to the purchase as an enhancement to a “more flexible hybrid approach to work,” which will facilitate employees “coming together in person to collaborate and build community.” The CFO added, “Our decision to exercise our option to purchase St. John’s Terminal further builds upon our existing plans to invest more than $250 million this year in our New York campus presence. It is also an important part of meeting our previously announced racial equity commitments, which include continuing to grow our workforce in diverse communities like New York.”

During the pandemic, Google, Twitter, Facebook and other leading companies called for their people to work from home for the foreseeable future. Remote work seemed to become the standard in a post-Covid-19 world. However, with recent announcements regarding the purchase, leasing and building of offices by Facebook, Amazon and Alphabet, we can’t take the “everyone is going to work-from-home” trend as a done deal.

Alphabet previously announced that it’s constructing a massive company-town project in Mountain View, California. The tech behemoth will build a combination of houses, retail stores, parks and recreations and a corporate campus spanning 40 acres. Google’s vision, called the “Middlefield Park Master Plan,” is an updated version of the company town and offers roughly 1.33 million square feet of office space, along with residential housing, open-air recreational space, commercial buildings, retail shopping and a host of other amenities. The search-engine company will hold ownership of the campus. READ MORE

By Jack Kelly

Source: forbes.com

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