Cushman & Wakefield to cut 700 property management workers in Silicon Valley

Cushman & Wakefield is cutting loose more than 700 workers tied to Google properties in Silicon Valley.

The Chicago-based commercial real estate firm is laying off the 733 employees after losing a contract to provide services at Google-owned offices in the South Bay and Peninsula, the San Francisco Business Times reported. The cuts impact building staff ranging from project managers to the director of the regional portfolio to “facilities coordinators” and “workplace experience ambassadors.”

Cushman distributed a mass layoff notice saying its work in Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Palo Alto and San Bruno will end on June 25. The next day, two other commercial real estate firms will pick up the slack.

“The majority of the portfolio in the Bay Area will transition to JLL with some properties in San Jose transitioning to CBRE,” Cushman told affected employees in the layoff notice. 

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Every job but four is being slashed at two office buildings Google owns at 2637 Marine Way and 800 Maude Avenue in Mountain View. It’s not clear if the tech giant is the client who ditched the contract.

A Cushman representative declined to comment to the Business Times. A spokesperson for Google’s parent company, Alphabet, was not immediately available. JLL and CBRE did not respond to a request for comment.

The layoffs come as Alphabet has shed real estate in a campaign to cut costs, which included slashing 12,000 of its own workers earlier this year. In the first quarter, the company cited $564 million in charges tied to whittling down offices.

A key Google real estate executive left the company this year as the company paused its Downtown West transit village in San Jose.

The laid-off Cushman workers can apply for jobs with JLL or CBRE, according to the notice.

“Cushman & Wakefield will no longer be providing services to this client, as our contract is ending soon,” a spokesperson said in an email to the Business Times. “This is normal course of business and we can confirm that 96 percent of impacted employees will be rehired at the end of the contract either with the incoming providers or within Cushman & Wakefield.”

Cushman, the world’s third-largest brokerage by revenue, is also in the midst of cost-cutting endeavors companywide. In February, the publicly traded firm told investors it aimed to slash $90 million in spending this year through job cuts after profits plunged by 80 percent.

The firm also faces a class-action lawsuit, filed in San Francisco, that claims the brokerage company stiffed workers out of at least $21.6 million in wages and fees. 

— Dana Bartholomew