Google reveals plan for 40-acre tech hub in Silicon Valley

Giant partnered with Lendlease to develop land it owns in the Bay Area

Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Lendlease’s Denis Hickey
Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Lendlease’s Denis Hickey

Google’s employees might be working remotely for the foreseeable future, but that isn’t changing the company’s plans in Silicon Valley.

The Alphabet subsidiary is planning a 40-acre master-planned community it wants to develop in its hometown of Mountain View, according to CNBC.

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The project, dubbed Middlefield Park Master Plan, calls for 1.33 million square feet of office space, around 30,000 square feet of retail space, up to 1,850 residential units, 20,000 square feet of event space and 12 acres of open space.

It’s part of Google’s wider 10- to 15-year plan to develop master-planned communities on land it owns around the Silicon Valley area. Lendlease is partnering with the company on the strategy, including on the Middlefield Park project.

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The partnership with Lendlease gives the Australian company an ownership stake in some of the jointly developed property, but Google will own most of the campus. Open spaces would be publicly accessible.

Google plans to invest $1 billion to build residential properties in the area.

Facebook and Apple, two of the area’s largest tech companies, have also pledged to invest in residential development as well after years of being blamed for fueling the housing shortage in Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Scores of companies based in the area, including Facebook and Twitter, announced that employees would be allowed to work from home indefinitely earlier this year in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

That’s caused residential rents to fall in San Francisco. As of June, rents were down 9.2 percent year over year. [CNBC]Dennis Lynch