Google abandoned the San Francisco Bay area project and had planned to build 15000 homes for employees and local residents

Thanks to CTOnews.com netizen Alejandro86 for the clue delivery! CTOnews.com, Nov. 5 (Xinhua)-- Google has terminated its San Francisco Bay project agreement with real estate developer Landlease, canceling plans to build a campus with tens of thousands of homes for employees and locals.

The company announced the project in 2019, promising to "develop at least 15000 new housing units at all income levels" on land it owns worth at least $750 million (CTOnews.com Note: currently about 5.483 billion yuan). About 4000 of these should be comfortable housing, a welcome presence in one of the most expensive areas in the United States.

The San Francisco Bay area project is a general term for Google's planned projects in San Jose (downtown west), Sunnyvale (Moffet Park) and Mountain View (Middlefield Park and North Bay Shore). San Jose, in particular, approved the massive project in 2021, with plans to build 4000 homes, office space for about 20, 000 employees, 300 hotel rooms and 10 parks. As part of the deal, Google agreed to allocate $200 million to support local businesses and job preparation programs that have been forced to relocate.

However, Google suspended construction of facilities on the west side of the city center earlier this year after demolition work began to make way for construction scheduled to begin in 2026. The company said at the time that it was still looking for "how to advance the construction of the San Jose park in a way that best suits its future needs."

The workplace has changed dramatically over the past few years, with Google adopting a mixed work system that allows employees to work from home for a few days a week. Earlier this year, Alphabet, Google's parent company, laid off 12000 employees after a period of growth.

In its announcement, Lendlease said the two companies had decided to terminate their agreement after Google conducted a comprehensive review of its real estate investment. In view of the current market conditions, "the existing agreement is no longer in the interests of both sides." However, according to a company spokesman to CNBC, Google has not completely abandoned its housing project. Alexa Arena, senior director of development at Google, said: "as we have shared before, we have been optimizing our real estate investments in the Bay area, and part of this work is to find options to move our development projects forward and deliver on our housing commitments."