Silicon Valley Office Developer John “Skip” Igoe Has Died

John “Skip” Igoe Jr., the commercial real estate developer who helped create Google’s Bay View Campus, has died at the age of 83.

Igoe’s career spanned more than six decades and was marked by the construction of corporate office campuses for companies like Google and PeopleSoft, the Silicon Valley Business Journal reported. Igoe led projects through Sares Regis Group, the seventh-largest commercial real estate developer in the Bay Area.

Born in Philadelphia in 1941, Igoe spent his high school years playing football and basketball while dating his eventual wife Peggy. He studied civil engineering at Villanova University and earned a bachelor’s degree in 1963.

From there, Igoe spent five years in the U.S. Air Force, completing his stint in 1968. While in the Air Force, he was involved in one of the Air Force’s spy aircraft programs and the military branch’s California housing projects. He became a captain before returning to the classroom, going to Stanford to earn a graduate degree in civil engineering and Drexel for a master’s in business administration. Those steps laid the groundwork for his career in real estate development.

Igoe later oversaw the construction and design of PeopleSoft’s 1-million-square-foot campus in Pleasanton. The company was acquired by Oracle in 2004. Since then, Oracle has sold and leased parts of the campus to other companies like Kaiser Permanente.

While working with Sares Regis, Igoe oversaw the development of the award-winning Taube Koret Campus for Jewish Life in Palo Alto. He also spearheaded notable projects in Southern California, like the corporate campus for enterprise cybersecurity provider Symantec in Culver City.

At Google, Igoe worked as the tech giant’s director of design and construction. In that role, he helped guide Google’s real estate expansion, including managing the development of more than 23 million square feet of offices. That included its Bay View Campus in Mountain View and its mass timber office in Sunnyvale.

Igoe is survived by his wife of 59 years, Peggy, five children and 13 grandchildren.

— Chris Malone Méndez