Google says it will buy St. John's Terminal, a 1.3M square foot office building it is leasing on Manhattan's West Side, for $2.1B in Q1 2022
Manhattan deal is priciest sale of a U.S. office building since pandemic began — Google said it is buying a Manhattan office building for $2.1 billion … Source: The Keyword .
The reported $2.1B price matters because the story identifies it as the priciest U.S. office-building sale since the pandemic began, making Google’s move a notable commitment to Manhattan office real estate.
First-order effects
Google will convert its leasehold at St. John’s Terminal into ownership of a 1.3M-square-foot Manhattan office building once the planned Q1 2022 purchase closes.
The transaction sets a high-value reference point for the specific market described in the article: U.S. office-building sales during the pandemic.
Second-order effects
Google’s owned-and-planned Manhattan sites—Chelsea Market, Hudson Square, and St. John’s Terminal—give it greater control over how its New York office footprint is configured than leasing each location independently.
Other owners of large Manhattan office assets gain a fresh comparable transaction, while tenants evaluating long-term space face one less major building remaining under its prior ownership structure.
Third-order effects
If Google continues pairing leased offices with purchases, major technology employers may increasingly treat core-city office real estate as strategic infrastructure rather than a purely flexible operating expense.
The pattern points to a more concentrated model of corporate campuses in Manhattan, with a small number of large employers controlling multiple connected or nearby properties.
The trend: Google’s Manhattan expansion reflects a shift by major technology employers toward owning key urban office hubs alongside leasing space.
For more than 20 years, New York City has been home to so many Googlers - excited to continue growing there and support the city's economic recovery with our purchase of St. John's Terminal in Manhattan. https://blog.google/... https://twitter.com/...
Just in case there was still any notion that the pandemic was going to reverse the growing concentration of wealth and prosperity in a handful of mostly coastal metropolises: https://www.wsj.com/... #fulfillment
And the tech giants shall inherit earth's office space: Google said it is buying a Manhattan office building for $2.1 billion, one of the clearest signals yet of big tech's growing appetite for office space https://www.wsj.com/...
Yeah, sure, working from “home” ... Google is buying a West Side office building in Manhattan for $2.1 billion, the biggest real estate deal in years. (It bought its 8th Ave NY headquarters building in 2010 for $1.8 billion.) https://www.wsj.com/...