Google Parent Alphabet Supersizes its Miami Offices

Google’s parent company, Alphabet, supersized its office space in Miami, adding fuel to market boosters’ assertion that tech firms are serious about the Magic City and aren’t merely establishing small offices here to dodge high-tax states.

Alphabet more than quadrupled its offices to about 45,000 square feet, up from 10,000 square feet at the 1450 Brickell Avenue tower in Miami’s financial district, Bloomberg reported, citing two anonymous sources. The deal was signed in the spring.

Google, which established an outpost in Miami about a decade ago, declined to comment to the publication.

The expansion comes on the heels of Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin going on residential buying sprees in South Florida, as California’s proposed Billionaire Tax Act heads to a referendum in November.

Over the past year, Page has bought $188 million in properties in Miami’s Coconut Grove neighborhood, including a waterfront compound purchased for $101.5 million. In March, Brin paid $51 million for LVMH CEO Michael Burke’s waterfront Miami Beach home.

Sergey and Brin no longer hold executive positions at Google, but they remain on Alphabet’s board and are the controlling shareholders.

The pair have a combined wealth of more than $573 billion, according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

A fever pitch of excitement over South Florida’s office market started in the first few years of the pandemic, when the tri-county region emerged as a magnet for out-of-state companies and residents. After a lull, the more recent blue-to-red state migration again led to headline-grabbing company relocations and top residential purchases by their executives.

Most notably, Palantir Technologies moved its headquarters from Denver, where it faced protests over having its AI tech used in deportations. It moved early this year to a co-working space in Aventura. The relocation came after Palantir CEO Alex Karp quietly bought a waterfront Venetian Islands mansion for $46 million last summer. He bought the next-door home for $28.5 million in May with plans to develop a compound on the properties.

Also this year, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, paid a record $170 million for an Indian Creek under-construction mansion.

Google’s major office expansion runs counter to the general industry consensus that billionaire company executives are primarily buying homes here and only opening small offices for their companies, while still keeping most operations out of state. Newcomer firms usually lease small spaces and expand years later if they decide to stay.

Still, Google’s Miami office pales next to its Mountain View, California, headquarters and area offices, which span over 10 million square feet. At New York’s Hudson Square, the tech firm has roughly 1.7 million square feet.

–– Lidia Dinkova