The suspension of construction of Google’s 80-acre campus, which was supposed to begin this year in San Jose, is announced by CNBC. From its own sources, the publication learned that Alphabet froze the construction of the Downtown West facility.
At the beginning of the year, the company cut the development team without giving notice to contractors regarding the date of resumption of campus construction.
The Downtown West project, approved in 2021, envisaged a concession to build a 15,000-home campus in Silicon Valley. More than half of the campus was to be dedicated to community support (assistance to displaced businesses). For this it was planned to allocate $200 million.
Construction was supposed to last for 10-30 years. According to California Governor Gavin Newsom, it was aimed at rebuilding the state after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Instead, after increasing the company’s staff by 20% since 2017, about 12,000 employees have been cut this year. This happened against the backdrop of falling orders from potential customers. In addition, Google no longer needs a large number of offices, because the hybrid work strategy adopted by the company assumes that employees will stay at home for some time.
