The Mountain View City Council unanimously approved Google’s new canopied campus in North Bayshore — paving the way for the search giant to begin building its first ground-up project this year.
Called Charleston East, the 595,000-square-foot project will include include walking trails, a public park and plaza and ground-floor retail.
Construction on the two-story project is expected to begin as early as next month and wrap up by the end of 2019.
Google didn’t face an ounce of pushback Tuesday night during the council’s public hearing on the project. Instead, residents showed up to praise the company’s community contributions, from education initiatives to local environmental work.
Others said the tech giant’s environmentally friendly plan would align with the city’s vision for the site. Google plans to cut down nearly 200 trees for the project, but will plant nearly 400 new ones that are species native to the area.
Plans for Charleston East turned heads last year when Google unveiled the futuristic design. “Our new campus will be integrated with nature and connected to the community with indoor and outdoor spaces that are inclusive, traversable and inviting,” Google said in a statement.
The tent-like roof will capture water for reuse and its solar paneled roof will create about four megawatts of power, said Michelle Kaufmann, an architect working for Google.
“To put that into context, all of the [solar] panels that are on top of Googleplex, as well as the parking lots, totals 1.6 megawatts,” she told the council. “So this is pretty big.”
The company will also create a bike-and pedestrian-friendly thoroughfare through the 18.7-acre campus.
Google will aggressively encourage its employees to choose transit, biking and walking to get to work to reduce road traffic. Company leaders have said its new office building won’t push area traffic over the city’s current “trip cap” of 19,500 cars per day during the morning rush hour for some of its key roadways and intersections.
Last week, the city of Mountain View released an updated environmental impact report that considers allowing up to 9,850 housing units— mostly studio and one-bedroom apartments — to rise in North Bayshore, a 650-acre area that is home to Google and other tech giants, including Intuit, Microsoft and LinkedIn.
Council members Tuesday said they were impressed by how much the company plans to open the new campus up to residents and visitors.
Even non-Googlers will have access to a 2-acre public outdoor plaza on the site and an indoor “green loop” walking path with art installations inside the building.
Taken as a whole, the project is a boon for the city, Vice Mayor Lenny Siegel said Tuesday.
“I’m not swayed by the scope of Google’s philanthropy or the utility of their products. … This is a project that other cities would die for, including Cupertino,” he laughed, referencing Apple’s planned Apple Park complex in Silicon Valley.
BY: www.bizjournals.com
BY: Heatherwick studio
