Google and Lendlease Partner Up
Google recently announced plans to invest $1B for affordable housing, targeting three Silicon Valley communities in which it owns property: San Jose, Sunnyvale, and Mountain View. To help with this ambition effort, Google has selected Lendlease as its development partner. Lendlease will oversee the development of retail, housing, hospitality, and public spaces, amounting to approximately 15 million square feet of space.
See also: Google Set to Invest $1B in Affordable Housing
Lendlease is an Australian firm, but it also has U.S. headquarters in New York City. They focus on construction, development and investment. The Google project is expected to take roughly 10 to 15 years to complete, during which time Google will also develop office space within these three communities for its own use.
“Today’s agreement expands on an existing and successful partnership that will help us deliver on two important objectives: Our commitment to accelerate the production of residential units in the Bay Area and our plan to build mixed-use developments,” David Radcliffe, vice president of real estate and workplace services at Google, said in a statement to CoStar. “Lendlease will play a key role in helping deliver at least 15,000 new homes on our land.”
Construction is expected to begin as early as 2021, but is dependent upon the gaining the necessary approvals from local zoning. The total value of the completed developments could exceed $15 billion.
Google CEO Sunda Pichai, stated in a June blog post that Google plans to repurpose at least $750 million of land it currently holds in the Silicon Valley area, by rezoning it from commercial to residential use. Google’s goal is to help alleviate some of the housing shortages in the Silicon Valley area. While not entirely responsible, some of the housing shortage and increase in housing values can be traced back to the growth of the various area tech companies and the higher-end salaries paid to technology employees, which price out families with more moderate incomes.
Keystone Commercial Brokerage serves the needs of commercial real estate investors in the Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, specializing in commercial property, multi-unit residential, office space, and multi-use property. Paul Phangureh has over 16 years of experience in buying and selling in the Santa Clara and San Mateo County areas. Contact Paul at 650-924-2544, or email at [email protected]
