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Google is buying Chelsea Market building for over $2B

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Re: Google is buying Chelsea Market building for over $2B

#31

Post by 52-6F-62 »

djtriptych wrote: post #19
Touche wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are other office occupants though, and it sounds like Google's going to squeeze them out. So the food offerings might stay, but it's going to begin to feel like a Google cafeteria.

Google employees already eat for free at 5-6 internal restaurants within the Google office space. I used to work at Google NYC and would occasionally eat at a nice Thai spot in Chelsea Market but most of the time I'd just take the free lunch.

If the food is at least as good as Google Waterloo (alas, I was only visiting.), then holy hell—I don't blame you. Coming from a more traditional office (with a gradually updating for-pay cafeteria) I could hardly believe it. It was really great food with an active policy of reducing waste (with published counts).

Re: Google is buying Chelsea Market building for over $2B

#33

Post by adjkant »

downandout wrote: post #6

$1600/ft seems shockingly high for commercial real estate, even in New York. Just because you have lots of money (that theoretically belongs to your shareholders) doesn’t mean you should overpay.

I'd point out that this is prime real estate. They could have bought a cheaper building but I don't think they overpaid by much if at all.

Re: Google is buying Chelsea Market building for over $2B

#34

Post by geofft »

fancyfacebook wrote: post #2

Google has largely ruined Boulder, CO after building a huge new sprawling thing and effectively dictating to locals and politicians exactly how they want the neighborhood and city to be structured going forward. Everyone who isn't a googler hates them and wishes we hadn't allowed that, much less given them massive amounts of corporate welfare. Resist googlers if you can, they destroy communities.

The real answer is for cities to be built up so much that even a Google-sized company is a drop in the bucket. Google NYC right now is about one city block (111 8th), expanding to two. That's a tiny part of Manhattan, which isn't even all of NYC.

My old church is located under the old Citigroup Center skyscraper at 601 Lexington, which is also an entire block; Citigroup used to have both that building and the block across the street, 399 Park, for a couple of decades. When they moved out of those buildings to another neighborhood in Manhattan, that caused a drop in noon mass attendance but that was really about it. Their presence didn't destroy the neighborhood, let alone the city, and their move didn't destroy it either.

The fact that NYC is capable of handling Citigroup-sized companies and Google-sized companies moving in and barely even noticing is one of the deep reasons I like living in NYC. I wish more other cities would do the same, because I don't think there's anything unique to NYC about the ability to do this. Maybe population - although the Denver-Aurora-Bolder metropolitan area, at 3M, isn't that much smaller than NYC (8.5M). The internet is telling me the Google Boulder office can support up to 1,500 employees. You shouldn't give them corporate welfare, but also you should just be able to accommodate them without that, they're not that big. It should just be a building, and you should have lots of those.

Re: Google is buying Chelsea Market building for over $2B

#35

Post by RangerScience »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #28
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Places that have gotten expensive because they've become desirable places to live and convinced lots of people to move there? The horror! The only real problem here is shitty local governance and NIMBYism that refuses to acknowledge reality and build more housing . In the end, it doesn't stop people from moving there, it just drives up costs and drives out natives and people lower on the socioeconomic ladder. If you…

They've only become desirable because of an influx of tech employers. Ergo, it makes sense for non-tech employed citizens to not want those employers to locate there (or expand). Also, existing citizens who own and live in these locations take priority over people who want to move in. No one is entitled to additional housing when tech companies foist externalities of additional workers (workers who could work remotel…

> existing citizens who own and live in these locations take priority

Yep, wealthy land owners, clearly the group that needs protecting.

Actually, can anyone name a major US city where most of the growth came from itself, rather than an influx?

Re: Google is buying Chelsea Market building for over $2B

#36

Post by geofft »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #28
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Places that have gotten expensive because they've become desirable places to live and convinced lots of people to move there? The horror! The only real problem here is shitty local governance and NIMBYism that refuses to acknowledge reality and build more housing . In the end, it doesn't stop people from moving there, it just drives up costs and drives out natives and people lower on the socioeconomic ladder. If you…

They've only become desirable because of an influx of tech employers. Ergo, it makes sense for non-tech employed citizens to not want those employers to locate there (or expand). Also, existing citizens who own and live in these locations take priority over people who want to move in. No one is entitled to additional housing when tech companies foist externalities of additional workers (workers who could work remotel…

There are a lot of things tech doesn't do right. But tech, in this context, is just a growth industry. There will be another growth industry in 30-50 years, and the exact same pressures will happen again. Will these cities be capable of supporting that industry? Or do they want to remain small towns for their existing population forever? Or, worse, do they want to treat tech as some sort of special case, so they can have entire abandoned neighborhoods full of overbuilt property just for Google because they thought there will never be another Google and they have to do special things for Google in particular?

NYC at least decided to take the first route decades ago, and has survived lots of industries moving in and out.

Re: Google is buying Chelsea Market building for over $2B

#37

Post by aaavl2821 »

saalweachter wrote: post #12
Touche wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are other office occupants though, and it sounds like Google's going to squeeze them out. So the food offerings might stay, but it's going to begin to feel like a Google cafeteria.

Do the businesses in Chelsea Market rely heavily on traffic from the office-workers above? Store-fronts in NYC tend to be pretty disconnected from the office/residential spaces above, with a few notable exceptions.

It's a great place but so busy that id be loathe to drop in for a working lunch. That place and the Rockefeller center concourse are some of the rare places in the world where getting lunch can be more stressful than work

Re: Google is buying Chelsea Market building for over $2B

#38

Post by CydeWeys »

djtriptych wrote: post #7
CodeSheikh wrote: post #4

Google NYC is literally right across the block from Chelsea Market. This transaction would mean that Google will occupy the real estate above the actual market. Chelsea Market is an amazing place with great offerings of food etc. As long as this transaction does not ruin the ecosystem of CM then New Yorkers are OK with this transaction. Lets face it who would not want to sell their real estate to The Google?

Google already occupies the majority of the space above the market - at least 3 full floors (As of a couple years ago). It's not much of a change for any New Yorkers except that they tend not to renew leases for other office space tenants.

New York Googler here.

Chelsea Market is actually 19 different buildings on the same block that have merged together over time. The floor layout is truly crazy. Some floors are staggered by a full half height at the interface between buildings, there are exterior courtyards on the inside of the block that are roofed over, and buildings are of differing height. You can see it all on Google Maps; contrast with 111 8th Ave next door (where I sit) that is all one proper building. https://www.google.com/maps/@40.7402908,-74.0061411,325a,35y...

And yeah, we already have a huge amount of office space in Chelsea Market, up to six floors now, and presumably buying the entire block made sense vs continuing to rent.

Hopefully the ground floor marketspace itself won't be affected. I can't imagine we'd kick all that out, though. It wouldn't be a good look. Chelsea Market is an iconic tourist destination.

Re: Google is buying Chelsea Market building for over $2B

#40

Post by yeukhon »

downandout wrote: post #6

$1600/ft seems shockingly high for commercial real estate, even in New York. Just because you have lots of money (that theoretically belongs to your shareholders) doesn’t mean you should overpay.

They want the entire building badly for years now so it makes sense to overpay and grab the deal right now before another developer comes in with a more competitive offer, knowing Google would not move away! $2B for this is not expensive, considered how much they had paid to other short-term leases. Moving to and decorating new office space will cost them many millions. If they can own the building, $2B is a big saving in the next decade (and I presume the purchase would come with a property tax credit). Google has enough money to buy ten of these in NYC. Finally consider the property value should Google ever want to sell the property or lending out.

Though if this was up to me, I would buy a land and build another giant Google Campus. But that's just me.

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