Google plans to spend more than $3.5 billion on offices and data centers in California this year, as part of its $9.5 billion investment in such properties across the United States.
The Mountain View-based company aims to create 12,000 new full-time jobs in the United States this year, executives announced today at the site of a mixed-use project already underway in the downtown area. city of San José.
In California, where the company has been based since its inception in 1998, it already has 13 offices and more than 54,000 full-time employees.
Google did not reveal how many new jobs would be in California.
He provided updates on several ongoing projects in the San Francisco Bay Area – a list of proposals that adds to millions of square feet of office space and thousands of new homes in the region.
“As we embrace our flexibility in the way we work, we believe it is more important than ever to invest in our campuses and that this will lead to better products, better quality of life for our employees and stronger communities,” Google’s Sundar Pichai, also CEO of parent company Alphabet, said in a statement.
The company plans to open a 1.2 million square foot office development in Mountain View called Bay View this year, and is completing construction of a 595,000 square foot campus nearby. Google executives expect Mountain View City Council to vote this year on a pair of mixed-use projects that would include nearly 9,000 homes and up to 2.6 million square feet of office space between them.
In Sunnyvale, about three miles away, Google is building a 1 million square foot campus.
Google’s plan to increase spending in its home state to $3.5 billion for the year comes the same month it began recalling some of its office workers, ending a pattern volunteer work-from-home at its Bay Area workplaces and several others across the country. Spending it plans to make on offices and data centers in California this year represents more than a third of its total US investment, underscoring the state’s importance in its real estate strategy.
The company has released few details about its investment in California, or how much of the $3.5 billion could be allocated to plans based on City of San Jose approval for more than 7 million square feet. of offices and 4,000 homes. He said he was “making progress” on the project with development partner Lendlease, but did not disclose a construction schedule.
Outside the Bay Area, a joint venture of two REITs, Hudson Pacific Properties and Macerich, is turning the former Westside Pavilion in Los Angeles into a nearly 600,000 square foot office campus, anchored in Google. The project is expected to open next year, according to Google’s statement. The company’s Southern California presence also includes satellite offices in Irvine and San Diego.