Google to Move into Downtown Austin’s Sail Tower

Austin’s “Sail Tower” has been empty since 2022.

But by the end of the year, Google will move into the downtown office building it agreed to lease in 2019, KVUE reported.

The tech giant had delayed moving employees into the 35-story, 804,000-square-foot building after the pandemic. Google didn’t provide a specific timeline but confirmed its plan to move in later this year. The full-building lease expires in 2038.

Google has eaten more than $53 million a year by paying for the trophy property lease it hasn’t used, the Austin Business Journal estimated.

Google employees currently work in East Austin’s Saltillo development or at the skyscraper at 500 West 2nd Street, next to the Sail Tower, according to the Austin Business Journal.

The Sail Tower, at 601 West 2nd Street, traded hands in December, when developer Trammell Crow Company sold it to Atlanta-based Cousins Properties for $521.8 million.

At the time, Cousins’ Tim Hendricks said he “felt very comfortable in Google and Google’s plans for the city of Austin” despite the fact that the company hadn’t moved into the property at the time of the sale, Austin Business Journal reported.

Industry experts are hopeful that return to office mandates from major companies like Google will buoy the troubled office market, which has suffered since the pandemic made remote work the norm.

While Austin’s office market vacancy has slowed its rapid acceleration, it still sat at 25.2 percent at the end of last year, JLL reported. There’s still nearly 3 million square feet of office space under construction in Austin, but the development pipeline is tightening, JLL said.

–Jess Hardin