San Jose city officials on Tuesday night officially approved a plan for Google to build a massive campus in the heart of California's third-large

Google gets the green light to build multi-billion dollar megacampus in San Jose

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2021-05-26 09:00:15

San Jose city officials on Tuesday night officially approved a plan for Google to build a massive campus in the heart of California's third-largest city.

For its "Downtown West" project, Google will develop 80 acres of land in downtown San Jose, including 7.3 million square feet of office space for 20,000 workers and thousands of housing units. It's Google's first mixed-use campus and will be one of its largest when completed. The San Jose city council unanimously approved the company's plans Tuesday evening and several council members held back tears while doing so.

The approval comes as Google aims to model a shift away from closed-off tech campuses to stem the growing alienation toward tech companies, whose success has contributed to a shortage of affordable housing and big cultural shifts in Silicon Valley and other tech hubs. Google, which is doubling down on bringing workers back to offices amid the weakening pandemic, is also planning another massive, town-like hub just 10 miles up the road in Mountain View.

"There's tremendous mistrust of the government and suspicion of Big Tech and it could have been easy for many of our community members simply to succumb to slogans and  simplistic thinking but thousands rolled up their sleeves," San Jose mayor Sam Liccardo said at Tuesday's meeting. "Rather than jump in one camp or another, community members pushed and prodded, and urged the city and Google to stretch and reach higher."

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