Google is going gangbusters in the suburbs east of Seattle.
The tech giant gave an inside look Thursday at the sprawling campus it has partially moved into and continues to build out in Kirkland, Wash., as it announced plans to invest another $100 million this year in the region where it first set up shop 15 years ago.
Google officially opened phase one of its Kirkland Urban campus with two 8-story glass office buildings it refers to as North and Central. Upon completion, four buildings will total 760,000 square feet of space.
As the company hosted dignitaries including Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, U.S. Rep. Suzan DelBene and Kirkland Mayor Penny Sweet, a crane and construction workers were busy on the adjacent South building, which is expected to open in 2023. An East building is planned for 2025.
The growth is part of Google’s ongoing commitment to Kirkland and Seattle where it employs more than 7,200 workers. In South Lake Union, Google is working on Block 38, a 330,000-square-foot building that will give Google five total buildings and 900,000 square feet of space in Amazon’s backyard.
And it’s a commitment to getting workers back in the physical office, at least part of the time, after more than two years of remote work brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Companywide, Google says it is investing $9.5 billion in offices and data centers and creating at least 12,000 jobs in the U.S. this year. The Puget Sound region is the company’s second largest U.S. engineering center outside the Bay Area.
“As the country continues to come back from the devastating pandemic, we are doubling down in the states that we call home,” said Paco Galanes, Kirkland site lead and engineering director. He confirmed that the company is proceeding with the design phase of another Kirkland site, a former Lee Johnson Chevrolet car dealership, which Google purchased in 2020.
In his own remarks Thursday, Inslee praised Google for being a “growth engine” in Washington and putting more people in the state into “incredible jobs.”
“The thing I really want to emphasize is your commitment to clean energy, your company’s commitment and your personal commitment to build a new economy, based on clean energy,” Inslee said, calling out Google’s efforts to operate on carbon-free energy on its campuses and data centers by 2030.
The Kirkland Urban mixed use development features may of the trappings used to lure tech workers in a competitive market where Google competes for talent with Microsoft, Amazon and many others. Both of those tech giants are in fact equally bullish on the region east of Seattle — Amazon is growing rapidly in downtown Bellevue and Microsoft is building out a massive update of its longtime Redmond campus.
Kirkland Urban is already home to a Shake Shack burger restaurant; a Topgolf driving range; a QFC grocery store; and more retail and dining. On a sunny afternoon, workers moved between buildings to explore lunch options or cruised past on rainbow-colored Google bikes.
Inside the Central building, Galanes and other Google reps touted the amenities that would make Googlers eager to return to the office.
Connected by a spiraling central staircase, each floor in the building is designed around a specific Washington state economic or cultural theme such as technology, aerospace, music, the outdoors and more. There are micro-kitchens, dining spaces, lounges, and meeting rooms galore. There’s a recording studio and band practice area; a dog lounge with a rooftop exercise area; a small movie theater; and a massive production studio for presenting Google events from the campus.
Around the perimeter of these common and mixed-use areas are the actual workspaces, newly realized to be more flexible for shrinking or growing teams in a work environment where maybe not everyone is coming to the office every day.
Google has moved to a hybrid work model in which it expects employees in the office at least three days a week. The model was expected to be fully functional at the start of April and was “designed to maximize flexibility while still facilitating innovation, collaboration and camaraderie of in-office experiences,” the company previously said.
Google would not say Thursday how many employees are currently working in the two finished buildings at Kirkland Urban or how many employees the campus may ultimately hold. Commercial real estate figures for tech companies typically amount to one employee per 150 to 200 square feet, which would put employee count on the finished campus at roughly 3,800.
Google also does not share the breakdown between how many employees work in Kirkland and how many work at offices in South Lake Union or Fremont.
After just a month of the new hybrid work model, Google says it does not yet have all the data on the number of people coming into its offices, but the company says it has seen an influx of people coming in regularly to work at the office and it’s seeing more each week.
If it was up to Kirkland Mayor Penny Sweet, she might be there every day. She called her city the best place in America to live, work and play and said partners like Google make it that way. She commended the company for stepping up to help small businesses impacted by the loss of tech workers in the community during the past two years.
“As we celebrate the opening of these gorgeous new facilities and Google’s return to the office … we get a glimpse of what the future can be,” Sweet said. “World class workspaces, housing choices, convenient amenities, and opportunities to live, work and play within walking distance.
“We look forward to welcoming more Googlers to our community,” she added.
Keep scrolling for more photos from GeekWire’s tour of Google’s Kirkland Urban campus:
