Alphabet owned Google is investing more than $1 billion on a new campus in New York. With this, it will becom the second major technology company after Amazon to pick America’s financial capital to expand and create thousands of jobs.
The 1.7 million square-foot campus, called Google Hudson Square, will include leased properties at Hudson Street and Washington Street, the company said in a blog post on Monday. The new campus will be the main location for Google’s advertising sales division, the Global Business Organization.
Google hopes to start moving into two Hudson Street buildings by 2020, followed by a Washington Street in 2022 and will have the capacity to more than double its New York headcount, currently more than 7,000, in the next 10 years.
The company’s plans to invest outside its home base mirror those of other U.S. tech giants such as Apple Inc, which said last week it would spend $1 billion to build a new 133-acre campus in Austin, Texas.
Mountain View, California-based Google’s move to invest in prime real estate on the lower west side of Manhattan also underscores the growing importance of New York as a hub for innovation and an incubator for technology companies.
Alphabet
U.S. corporations are also under pressure from the Trump administration to create more jobs domestically. Companies that have moved jobs overseas or closed factories have drawn sharp rebukes from President Donald Trump.
Earlier this year, the company announced a $2.4 billion purchase of the Manhattan Chelsea Market. It also has leased space on Pier 57 jutting into the Hudson, which will create a four-block campus.