It’s been a whirlwind six months for Google, a Silicon Valley tech company whose real estate presence has been on an expansion tear.
The firm completed four mega-deals in the last year to either lease or buy some of the state’s most prime real estate. Topping the list was its $1 billion purchase of a business park near its Googleplex headquarters in Mountain View, reflecting the Bay Area’s most-expensive deal in 2018.
Most recently, the tech giant announced plans to lease the entirety of Hudson Pacific Property and Macerich’s Westside Pavilion office redevelopment. With that 584,000 square feet of office space, Google will control 1.2 million square feet of office space in Los Angeles County, according to data from CoStar analytics.
Google also holds about 100,000 square feet of space at the Frank Gehry-designed Binoculars Building at 340 Main Street in Venice and an additional 13,500 square feet at 331 Foothill Road in Beverly Hills.
The Real Deal compiled a list of some of the biggest deals the firm has completed in the few months in California. It’s worth mentioning Google also claimed the most expensive deal in the country last year with its $2.4 billion acquisition of the Chelsea Market in New York City.
One Westside
The shuttered Westside Pavilion mall will soon be transformed into a Google playpen, renamed One Westside. After months of rumblings, developer Hudson Pacific Properties and Macerich announced Tuesday that they had inked a deal with the highly coveted tech company. Google will take 584,000 square feet of the office redevelopment, which Gensler is designing. The lease term will last 14 years, starting when the $475 million project wraps in 2022.
Britannia Shoreline Technology Park
Google’s most-monstrous deal in California took shape in Mountain View, just a few blocks from its Googleplex headquarters. In November, the firm dropped $1 billion to purchase the Britannia Shoreline Technology Park, a 51.8-acre property with 12 buildings. Google was already a main tenant at the site before its big purchase. The property is even bigger than its 3.1 million-square-foot headquarters nearby. At $1 billion, the deal reflected the second-biggest deal in the country, eclipsed only by Google’s other mega-deal in New York.
Landmark at One Market
In San Francisco, Google leased 300,000 square feet at the former Salesforce headquarters. The deal, which also took place in November, raised Google’s office space in the city by 30 percent to 1.3 million square feet, according to data from Cushman & Wakefield. Its new digs at the Landmark at One Market Building fit more than 1,500 employees.
Spruce Goose
Though it is not exactly a new lease or purchase, it’s worth highlighting that Google finally moved into its new L.A. headquarters in Playa Vista in October. The firm first leased the hangar in 2016, two years after spending $120 million on 12 acres of surrounding land. Dubbed Spruce Goose, the cavernous hangar space spans 319,000 square feet and includes several conference rooms, food options, a gym, and 250-person event space. In the 1940s, the space was used to house Howard Hughes’ massive H-4 Hercules plane.