Google is investing more than $1 billion in a new campus along the Hudson River in Manhattan – a major expansion that could double its Big Apple workforce to 14,000 in the next decade, the search giant announced Monday.
The 1.7 million-square-foot campus — called Google Hudson Square — will include leased properties in the West Village and “will be the primary location for our New York-based Global Business Organization,” the company said.
The Mountain View, California-based company said a large office building at 550 Washington St. will be the centerpiece of its new campus, which also will include two buildings at 315 and 345 Hudson St.
A Google spokesperson told The Post that the company did not pursue any tax incentives as part of the expansion.
“We hope to start moving into the two Hudson Street buildings by 2020, followed by 550 Washington Street in 2022 once the building is complete,” Google parent Alphabet’s CFO Ruth Porat wrote in a blog post.
“Our investment in New York is a huge part of our commitment to grow and invest in US facilities, offices and jobs. In fact, we’re growing faster outside the Bay Area than within it,” Porat said.
“New York City continues to be a great source of diverse, world-class talent — that’s what brought Google to the city in 2000 and that’s what keeps us here,” she added.
Google — which employs more than 7,000 people in the city — has continued to build up its New York presence, announcing earlier this year that it was buying the Manhattan Chelsea Market building for $2.4 billion and planned to lease more space at Pier 57 along the Hudson.
“With these most recent investments in Google Chelsea and Google Hudson Square, we will have the capacity to more than double the number of Googlers in New York over the next 10 years,” Porat said.
William Floyd, Google’s director of public policy and government relations, told the Wall Street Journal that the company’s plan to add 7,000 workers in the city in that time frame is “a conservative estimate.”
The company’s footprint in the city is expected to cover almost 7 million square feet of owned or leased office space, enough for a total of more than 46,000 employees, according to the Journal.
The Hudson Square campus will become a hub of Google’s global sales operation, Floyd told the paper.
Ellen Baer, president and CEO of the Hudson Square Business Improvement District, said that “Google’s expansion sends a powerful message that Hudson Square has become one of the city’s most dynamic creative districts.”
“With new public-private partnerships, neighborhood improvements and vibrant open space, there’s never been a better time to be part of the growth taking place here in Hudson Square,” she told The Post in a statement.
Google’s announcement comes shortly after rival Amazon said it would put one of its second headquarter locations in Queens. The other is in suburban Washington, DC.
Amazon has been criticized for extracting $3 billion in tax incentives and grants from the state and city as part of its negotiations to build the campus in the Long Island City neighborhood.
Another corporate giant that has outgrown its West Coast hub is Cupertino, California-based Apple, which last week said it would spend $1 billion to build a new campus in Austin, Texas, that will create at least 5,000 jobs.
Both Google and Apple handled their expansion plans quietly, while Amazon asked for municipalities across the country for proposals, prompting critics to call it a “Hunger Games” contest.
With Post wires