Former Google Sunnyvale Offices Poised to Become Housing

Some of Google’s former offices in Sunnyvale could become housing.

Dallas-based real estate firm Beam Reach has proposed demolishing the one-story research and development building at 215 Bordeaux Drive and replacing it with a 265-unit residential building, the Silicon Valley Business Journal reported. Sunnyvale planning commissioners unanimously signed off on the proposal earlier this month.

Google listed the Bordeaux Drive property and others in Sunnyvale’s Moffett Park neighborhood for sublease three years ago as the Alphabet-owned tech giant sought to trim its office footprint. Beach Reach is looking to clear the building entirely and erect an eight-story multifamily building on the 2-acre site.

The plans from Beam Reach are the latest in the Bay Area to call for new life for underused office space. Sunnyvale boasts an office vacancy rate of 10.9 percent, well below the 15.4 percent vacancy rate across Silicon Valley, according to CBRE data cited by the Business Journal. In San Mateo County, developers are increasingly looking to demolish underutilized offices to make way for housing. Multifamily developers are ostensibly looking to capitalize on the booming demand for housing as workers in the growing artificial intelligence sector move into the Bay Area, according to the Business Journal.

In recent years, Google has vacated 5.6 million square feet of office space across the region. About 40 percent of that went up for sublease. But much of that sublease space has since been pulled from the market.

This year, Google pulled almost 2 million square feet of available space in Silicon Valley from the sublease market. The company could have done so to keep rival AI firms from securing turnkey office space, sources told the Business Journal. Earlier this year, part of Google’s downsizing included the emptying of its Google Cloud offices in Sunnyvale and consolidating into its two-building, 1.5-million-square-foot campus at 100 and 200 West Caribbean Drive.

Sunnyvale is required by the state to plan for 11,966 new housing units by 2031, making projects like Beam Reach’s critical to reaching that goal. Moffett Park is projected to be a key piece of that puzzle, as the city looks to turn the office-heavy district into mixed-use neighborhoods.

— Chris Malone Méndez