Dealmaker: Google to Acquire New York Office for $2.1B

Google announced it will purchase St. John’s Terminal in Manhattan for $2.1 billion.

Google currently leases the St. John’s Terminal site at 550 Washington Street. The tech firm said it expects the sales transaction to close in early 2022.

When complete, the 1.7 million-square-foot Hudson Square campus will serve as the New York headquarters for Google’s Global Business Organization.

St. John’s Terminal opened in 1934 as a freight terminal on the High Line, part of the New York Central Railroad’s West Side Line. The four-block structure was decommissioned as a freight terminal in 1960 and converted to office use for businesses including Merrill Lynch and Bloomberg. Oxford Properties, Toronto, acquired the site in 2018. The building offers 100,000-square-foot floorplates with unobstructed waterfront views.

Google has announced plans for a more “flexible” hybrid approach to work. “It is why we continue investing in our offices around the world,” Google CFO Ruth Porat said. “Our decision to exercise our option to purchase St. John’s Terminal further builds upon our existing plans to invest more than $250 million this year in our New York campus presence.”

New York represents Google’s largest office outside California.