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Google gets go-ahead to build 153-acre Bay Area neighborhood by headquarters
- RobotToaster 3y agoSo we're back to building company towns?
- tbrownaw 3y agoAs long as they pay in real money rather than scrip and the local institutions don't discriminate based on whether you work for The Company, I wouldn't think it would be worse than any other new neighborhood in the same area.
- ninth_ant 3y agoWell the actual towns aren't building much anything, so...
- Keegs 3y agoI wouldn’t be shocked if they came back. It’s so hard to build that being a large company gives you both the opportunity and incentives. It’s normal to want a short commute. If you can offer employees an affordable place to live near your office, you might even get away with lower salaries: if the difference would disappear to rent anyway, why not live in Googleville with complimentary YouTube TV?
- efields 3y agoYeah and I don’t think it’s a terrible thing. It’s not a fantastic thing, but they are building public spaces and they are building affordable units. Sadly the best we can get at the moment.
- 0max 3y agoIf you read Octavia Butler, you know where we're headed.
- lotsoweiners 3y agoIf you thought the support was bad when you get locked out of your email account just wait until you lose your keys.
- pkelly 3y agoI'm not sure this is so much a company town as Google is trimming its mega in-person office footprint. The bay area is in dire need of housing so I'm all for more homes getting built. 15% set aside for low-income housing too which is a good thing.
- juujian 3y agoAre they just going to build a single family home suburbia for rich execs though? To attract people and convince them to move to CA?
- ianburrell 3y agoThe plan is for 7000 units, a lot of office space, and a bunch of other things. It needs to be midrise apartments to fit that many people. Which is exactly what they should be building.
- pkelly 3y ago7k units / 153 acres, so 45 units per acre. Decently dense. Suburbia is more like 10 so huge increase over most of bay area. This site is helpful to visualize units / acre. https://mrsc.org/stay-informed/mrsc-insight/april-2017/visualizing-compatible-density https://mrsc.org/stay-informed/mrsc-insight/april-2017/visua...
- notatoad 3y agothat's a super useful visualization. thanks for sharing.
- pkelly 3y agoYou're welcome!
- leesalminen 3y agoIt’s wild to me that someone making 300k/yr would want to live in an apartment building. I’m assuming they’ll be constructed like every other apartment in the past decade with paper thin walls and little consideration for natural light. I guess I’m the outlier but I would never consider living in one of those ever again.
- cma 3y agoThe opt-out village? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMChO0qNbkY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMChO0qNbkY
- x86x87 3y agoIn a first for real estate, Google discontinues popular neighborhood. "We just couldn't get billions of dollars out of it and the buildings showed little to no AI" says Google spokesperson Bardy McBardson,
- bombcar 3y agoIt’s a joke but it has happened when the developer/hoa goes bankrupt.
- 8ytecoder 3y agoYou joke but they already did that in San Jose. Years of the city fighting to get the project reviewed and approved and Google simply stopped just short of ground breaking and is now “reevaluating” it. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/21/googles-80-acre-san-jose-mega-campus-on-hold-amid-economic-slowdown-.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/21/googles-80-acre-san-jose-meg...
- inamberclad 3y agoGoogle already owns a substantial amount of real estate, both office and residential, around the bay area. REWS is a large business unit, just not one with a lot of public exposure.
- kodah 3y agoThey could also just support remote work and not be such a factor in consolidating so many people that make so much money in such a small area that engineers making $300k [1] are considered middle class. This seems to be just extending the problem. 1: https://smartasset.com/data-studies/how-to-be-middle-class-americas-largest-cities-2023 https://smartasset.com/data-studies/how-to-be-middle-class-a...
- knorker 3y agoAll the SVPs and VPs are remote. Presumably these leaders are showing the way of the future? (ok, so not "all", but there's a lot of "rule for thee but not for me")
- pb7 3y ago$400K/year is the 95th percentile individual income in the Bay Area. That's not middle class.
- gedy 3y agoI suppose, that’s probably what you need to have a middle-class lifestyle up there too
- reducesuffering 3y ago0 chance. That's $270k after tax for a single earner family. A US middle class 4br/2ba 1800 sqft. SFH is $50k/yr to rent within 30 minutes of Google. So $220k in disposable income while US median household income is just $70k.
- gedy 3y agoSure, but I'd count home ownership in a safe area as a middle class metric. That would at least double the housing costs.
- reducesuffering 3y ago
- freitzkriesler2 3y agoReminds me of the factory towns that existed in the 19th and 20th centuries. At least in this case its to make expensive housing less expensive for talent who doesn't want to come to your hq because the region is an overpriced mess. Also, it is a good inflation hedge.
- agent281 3y agoAssuming that this doesn't devolve into a company town, Google deserves credit for taking on such a large housing project. The housing problems in California (and especially the Bay) require efforts from public and private actors. It's especially heartening to see them take aim at car centric development. I can only hope that others will follow their example.
- treprinum 3y agoWasn't the area around Google contaminated? Not sure why would anyone willingly live there all the time.
- agent281 3y agoA lot of the bay area is due to old chip manufacturing plants. I want to say it has one of the largest concentrations of Superfund sites in the US, but don't quote me on that. Edit: Don't quote me, quote the Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/09/silicon-valley-full-superfund-sites/598531/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/09/silic...
- pphysch 3y agoProject map: https://www.mountainview.gov/home/showpublishedimage/857/637947063732400000 https://www.mountainview.gov/home/showpublishedimage/857/637...
- notatoad 3y agothe linked articled includes this map
- LightBug1 3y ago[flagged]
- AlbertCory 3y agoSquinting at this map: I think the new residential places are mostly replacing existing Google office buildings. Thus it fixes (tongue firmly in cheek) two problems at once: too much office space, and not enough housing. I grew up a couple miles from Pullman. They were nice houses; still in use. https://www.nps.gov/pull/learn/historyculture/the-strike-of-1894.htm https://www.nps.gov/pull/learn/historyculture/the-strike-of-...
- pkelly 3y agoI just did some similar squinting by comparing satellite view with the map on the SFgate article. Development is mainly between 101 and Charleston Rd. I see lots of Google office buildings in that area. Also I chuckled a bit when I realized I was using Google maps to make this connection
- pcurve 3y agoSo kind of like Austin's Domain development?
- zahma 3y agoAnd so Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake tech campus vision begins. It’s frightening to think that as the world becomes increasingly hostile and inhospitable, especially in California, that company store villages like this will become sanctuaries made possible from the insane value derived from the masses’s data.
- Evidlo 3y ago[flagged]
- pkelly 3y agoDang, this post has already fallen to 100th on HN, way off front page. The algo is pretty rough...