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Posted Feb 1, 2019, 2:19 PM
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Registered User
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Join Date: Jul 2018
Posts: 21
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Here's a little bit more:
Quote:
Google is close to announcing a major expansion of its Atlanta office that will put hundreds of workers on the top floors of a new Midtown tower.
Google will lease up to 200,000 square feet for its new space in the 31-story 1105 West Peachtree building, which broke ground a month ago. The project is being developed by longtime Atlanta real estate company Selig Enterprises Inc.
Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) will add at least 500 jobs in Atlanta, and that may be conservative, according to sources familiar with the plans. It’s not been officially disclosed but has been talked about in the city’s real estate circles for weeks.
The expansion would more than triple the space of Google’s current office at Midtown’s 10 10th Street building.
Google did not respond to several emails from Atlanta Business Chronicle.
Selig Enterprises could not comment.
Atlanta is one of multiple cities where Google is expanding. In December, Google announced it was adding thousands of jobs in New York City. On Thursday, The Austin American-Statesman reported the technology giant had leased a 35-story high-rise.
Its new project in Atlanta brings prestige to the city’s technology sector, which is known as a hub for fintech companies such as NCR Corp.
“Google is the gold-standard in software engineering and development,” said David Cummings, a serial entrepreneur and one of the city’s top voices in technology.
“This is more evidence Atlanta is considered a pinnacle of software development talent,” said John Yates, a partner in the technology practice at Morris Manning & Martin LLP.
“We have always been a software town,” Yates said. “It’s true over the past 15 years we went deeper in vertical markets like fintech, e-commerce and education technology. But, our foundation is software.”
While Atlanta lost in its bid to land the second North American headquarters of Amazon.com Inc., it finished among the 20 finalists for the project known as HQ2.
“That put us on the lists of many companies like Google considering new markets for expansion,” Cummings said.
Big, tech-related jobs announcements over the past six months have come from companies such as BlackRock (NYSE: BLK), which is putting a new innovation center in Atlanta.
And last October, Salesforce.com said it will add 600 jobs in Buckhead, where it’s naming an office tower after itself.
Midtown has been a center of gravity for much of the city’s employment growth. Since 2015, companies, such as Pandora and NCR Corp., have added more than 20,000 jobs in just a one-mile area of the neighborhood.
It has the density, walkability, transit access and street-life that appeals to companies trying to win the recruiting game. And Georgia Tech, said Kevin Green, president and CEO of the Midtown Alliance, “is the giant mothership in the middle of it all.”
Tech’s expansion of Technology Square, primarily between 3rd and 8th streets, has been a catalyst, with companies such as Norfolk Southern Corp. moving their headquarters there.
Mark Toro, a managing partner with North American Properties and chair of the Midtown Alliance, said U.S. companies are “competing in a vicious battle for talent.”
“We see a desire among their employees to connect with people and the neighborhood outside of their own office space,” Toro said.
No other part of the city can match the urban lifestyle of Midtown, he added.
“Urbanization is rampant across American cities,” Toro said. “Where it’s being seen most vividly is Midtown.”
For months, Selig Enterprises has reported steady inquiries from office tenants about its 1105 West Peachtree tower, which is part of a $400 million mixed-use project that will also include a condo building and hotel.
The overall project, which will begin going vertical early this year, will take a block at 12th and West Peachtree streets and connect to the Midtown Art Walk, a half-mile promenade linking the Midtown and Arts Center MARTA stations.
In December, Atlanta law firm Smith, Gambrell & Russell LLP said it was relocating its headquarters to Selig’s new tower. With Google, 1105 West Peachtree will already be at least 40 percent pre-leased.
The project marks the ongoing expansion for Selig Enterprises into development. It also hastens the ongoing transformation of West Peachtree, which is still primarily a thoroughfare between Midtown and downtown.
For decades, the center of Midtown has been 14th and Peachtree.
However, most of the new development in Midtown since the recession ended has been south of 14th and toward the Connector.
West Peachtree is probably “still a bit hostile from a pedestrian’s point of view, but we are working on that,” Toro said of Midtown Alliance’s long-term goal for both West Peachtree and Spring Street. “West Peachtree will be the next Peachtree Street.”
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Also meant to say the residential portion would go through Invest Atlanta, specifically.
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