Google's California megacampus appears to slow to halt amid economic challenges
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Google's (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) ambitious plans for an 80-acre campus in San Jose, Calif., have run afoul of the same slowdown affecting investment across all of big tech.
On Thursday, the company said it would be taking $0.5B in accounting charges -- and perhaps more in the future -- related to office-space reductions (that are also tied to charges linked to workforce reductions).
Perhaps unsurprisingly, construction of the new megacampus now appears to be on hold after an initial demolition phase, leaving San Jose's plans for "Downtown West" in limbo, CNBC reported.
The huge project, approved in 2021, was set to bring 7.3M square feet of office space along with thousands of new housing units and 15 acres of public parks, and has an estimated economic impact of $19B. Some San Jose historical landmarks were demolished to make room for its big footprint.
Now the campus development team has been gutted, CNBC said, and there's no plans to restart construction on a project that was to break ground before the end of the year. Lead project developer LendLease laid off 67 employees, including a number of community engagement managers, and Google removed construction updates from its website for the project.
A construction project of this scale was always going to take years if not decades, so there's time for Google to get its development back on track.
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