Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google is buying Chelsea Market building for over $2B

therealdeal.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 257 posts

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

#131

Post by tptacek »

hueving wrote: post #104
geofft wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

>The real answer is for cities to be built up so much that even a Google-sized company is a drop in the bucket. That's a repulsive suggestion to many people who live in Boulder. Living in a city of <250k people is a feature, not a bug. Boulder is not cheap, if people wanted density they could already move to Denver for the same price and climate.

Boulder can't have it both ways: you can't ask for blockbuster skyline employers and low density; or, you can, but as you can see from SFBA, the result is inhumane.

If Boulder wants to be Ann Arbor of the Mountains, that's fine. But I suspect that's not what Boulder really wants; people who live in Boulder want to have a competitive employment market with multiple options for where to work and little risk of being forced to relocate out of town if their job doesn't work out. That's a basket of benefits that you can't humanely get while holding density constant.

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

#132

Post by hueving »

oh_sigh wrote: post #123
hueving wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'd like to know what we're doing to destroy communities and how we can prevent that. Stop moving into small cities with workers paid significantly above the average of the existing residents. Restaurants open that they can't afford, the limited housing stock gets bid up quickly, good schools get overcrowded, etc. It's not a pleasant answer, but realistically that's ultimately what upsets a good chunk of the people…

Over half a million people live within commuting distance of Boulder. It may 'only' have 100k people in it, but you aren't forced to live in the city limits if you want to work at Google Boulder

But many will want to, and that's enough to impact the market there significantly.

No Googlers are forced to live in Mountain View either. That doesn't change the fact that Google employees fight for houses in Mountain View.

People with means who do not like commutes will buy closer housing. And guess what, most people don't like commutes.

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

#133

Post by SFLemonade »

huac wrote: post #91
SFLemonade wrote: post #77

Between this $2B deal and the $5B Apple Park deal, I start to wonder how companies are justifying these purchases as remote and distributed work becomes more feasible. They're probably focused on the fact that productivity is still higher in co-located settings and the best talent pools are in major metro areas. But what if, instead, they invested $500M in remote work research and $500M in building a remote work infr…

Google has experimented with that idea in London: https://www.campus.co/london/en . Free space with wifi and coffee and obviously nice furniture. They use the event space to hold tech talks and the like -- I wonder if it's worked out as more than just a brand investment.

Very interesting. This seems like more of an open co-working space, but it pokes at that hybrid remote / co-located idea.

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

#134

Post by dsnuh »

jstarfish wrote: post #69
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…

> 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 want affordable housing markets, you have to build housing in response to demand. Once housing prices skyrocket and the cheapest buy-in s…

Yeah, generally speaking, if you are comparing the same types of housing (Single Family Homes) isn't new construction almost always more expensive than the existing inventory? Unless OP is talking about building more of different types of housing (multi-family, condos, etc.), then I don't see how the cost for housing goes down without a recession, as you said.

Another issue with the "just build more" philosophy is that it takes no account of the added infrastructure stresses that drive up other prices (gas, electricity, water, traffic, public transit, medical/police/fire) in the community and can detract from the quality of life previously enjoyed by the natives.

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

#135

Post by sumeno »

hueving wrote: post #100
finkin1 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Boulder and don't share this sentiment whatsoever. Google already has a large campus here and they're expanding into an area that frankly needed to be renovated anyway. Their entire new + old complex is supposed to house ~2,000 employees. If adding 1.5k employees and a new building is "largely ruining Boulder" in your eyes you should see a doctor.

>If adding 1.5k employees and a new building is "largely ruining Boulder" in your eyes you should see a doctor. Put some effort into understanding perspectives before resorting to derision. Bringing thousands of highly paid employees into a smaller city is often not good for many who already lives there unless they own property. The majority of the new jobs will not go to existing residents, rents will increase, rest…

I agree that rising housing costs are a problem and more should be done on the affordable housing front, but everything getting more crowded sounds pretty good for those businesses that are getting crowded. A growing vibrant economy is a good thing for a city to have.

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

#136

Post by stale2002 »

hueving wrote: post #118
Xorlev wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've lived and worked in Colorado my whole life, joined Google Boulder about 8 months ago. Spent a ton of time in Boulder before that; my wife is from Boulder proper. Honestly? Google is barely a speck in the whirlwind of changes that Boulder is undergoing. Tech is a huge part of it, but you can't throw that entirely at Google's feet. There's been Silicon Valley expats and tons of other folks moving to Boulder for ye…

>I'd like to know what we're doing to destroy communities and how we can prevent that. Stop moving into small cities with workers paid significantly above the average of the existing residents. Restaurants open that they can't afford, the limited housing stock gets bid up quickly, good schools get overcrowded, etc. It's not a pleasant answer, but realistically that's ultimately what upsets a good chunk of the people…

What if, instead, these cities relax zoning laws, and allow supply to meet demand in the housing market?

For every 1k Googlers who move to the city, the city should make damn sure that at least 1k apartments are built by developers.

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

#137

Post by stale2002 »

jstarfish wrote: post #69
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…

> 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 want affordable housing markets, you have to build housing in response to demand. Once housing prices skyrocket and the cheapest buy-in s…

Thats not how supply and demand works.

The purpose of building more houses, is not to make new houses for the existing, poor residents to live in. The purpose is to prevent the NEW rich residents from displacing old residents.

For every million dollar condo that is built in the marina SF, that is 1 less family in the mission that will be displaced.

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

#138

Post by oplav »

oh_sigh wrote: post #112
ionforce wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know what's going to happen for us. Who is us?

"BAMTech" aka the old live video streaming arm started by MLB. They were bought out by Disney, which will be using the tech as the backbone of their own streaming service which is coming out in 2020 or so

Disney's new ESPN streaming push (which is also powered by BAMTech) is launching this spring.

https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/07/espns-streaming-service-wi...

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

#139

Post by dionidium »

hueving wrote: post #104
geofft wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

>The real answer is for cities to be built up so much that even a Google-sized company is a drop in the bucket. That's a repulsive suggestion to many people who live in Boulder. Living in a city of <250k people is a feature, not a bug. Boulder is not cheap, if people wanted density they could already move to Denver for the same price and climate.

The problem is that I don't think there's a compelling case to be made that the people who happen to live in Boulder at this exact moment in time are more deserving of the right to live there than anybody else in the United States. Other people want to live in Boulder for the same reasons you do. If enough other people want that, then it's going to grow.

Interestingly, the modern liberal position seems to be that everyone is welcome here, just, you know, not actually here here. Somewhere else, here. Not where I live, here. We talk about this in terms of immigration, but my experience is that, in actual practice, people don't even want Ohioans to move to their town.

Post reply on HN