The search (and wait) is over.
Google’s new campus atop a pier that juts out into the Hudson River officially opened to workers and the public earlier this week.
According to the New York Post, the 630,000-square-foot space on Pier 57 in Chelsea features three buildings for 450 employees — as well as a two-acre publicly accessible rooftop park along with a food hall and an outdoor screening area for movies during the Tribeca Film Festival.
The campus was christened on Monday during a celebration at the pier located on the West Sid Highway near 15th Street featuring Mahor Eric Adams, Gov. Kathy Hochul, and Google chief financial officer Ruth Porat.
Adams and Hochul took the time to suggest workers start returning to the office after two years of pandemic-enduced working from home.
“So get some new work clothes, because you might have put on a couple of COVID pounds — I’m guilty too — and get back to work,” said Hochul. “Come back here.”
Google, which also has two other offices in the city — one at 111 Eighth Avenue and another at the Milk Building at 450 W. 15th Street — already employs 12,000 workers in the city and is still looking to grow there.
Back in September, it paid $2.1 billion for a 1.3 million-square-foot waterfront building at 550 Washington Street Hudson Square that was built in 1930 as a terminal for freight trains that ran on the High Line.
The 12-story building takes up two full city blocks, and its acquisition could push up the number of employees Google has in Manhattan by another 2,000.
And it appears Google intends to man the space: earlier in the month, management there asked employees to come back to the office for at least three days a week as part of a new hybrid work model.
[New York Post] — Vince DiMiceli