Google approved for 153-acre retail village in Mountain View

Google has won the go-ahead to build thousands of homes, offices and hotels in an urban retail village near its headquarters in Mountain View.

The tech giant won approval from the city to build a 153-acre master-planned community bounded by Charleston Road, Highway 101, Huff Avenue and Stevens Creek, the Silicon Valley Business Journal reported.

The North Bayshore Campus project, as it’s known, would include more than a million more square feet of offices, thousands of homes, parks, shops and restaurants, a pair of hotels and a school. The development would replace single-story offices and parking lots from the 1980s.

“This is a historic milestone,” Mayor Alison Hicks told the Business Journal concerning the city’s largest development. “This is what the next generation of neighborhoods should be.”

Google has tried to redevelop the area just south of its headquarters for the last decade, having bought numerous properties. The company and Australian development partner Lendlease filed a master plan in 2021. 

Plans call for up to 7,000 apartments and condominiums, including 15 percent set aside as affordable housing. Seven acres would be designated for the 1,050 affordable homes.

The project would include up to 3.1 million square feet of offices, including 1.8 million square feet of redeveloped buildings. Two hotels would have up to 525 combined rooms. The retail component would have up to 289,000 square feet of ground-floor shops and restaurants, plus 55,000 square feet of community buildings.

The North Bayshore Campus village will include five parking garages, 26.1 acres of parks and open space and 4.1 acres for a future school.

The project would include 5 percent fewer affordable homes than first proposed, because of changing economic circumstances, according to the Business Journal. The homes would be built on land donated by the firm for affordable housing for lower and middle income households.

After pushback from the mayor and other City Council members, Google pledged to include the affordable units into the housing it intends to build – if and when economic circumstances change, Hicks said.

It’s unclear when the company intends to go forward with its North Bayshore project. As part of signing off on Google’s master plan, the City Council gave it 30 years to develop the site.

In San Jose, Google had its Downtown West transit village project at Diridon Station approved in 2021 and began prepping the site for construction. But in April, it put the brakes on the development that was to house up to 25,000 Google workers. 

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— Dana Bartholomew