Colorado Real Estate Journal - January 7, 2015
Developers knew they had a hit when they assembled 4.33 acres that Google picked for its new $100 million Boulder campus. The property at the southwest corner of 30th and Pearl streets sits catty-corner from the city’s transit village, across the street from a popular Whole Foods market and within a short walk of shops and restaurants at Twenty Ninth Street. “That was really the impetus in putting the deal together originally. It was an expensive site to assemble, but the fundamental economics and location speak for themselves , ” said Dan Otis, principal of Brickstone Partners. Otis and Darren Fisk of Forum Real Estate Group, through a partnership called Pearl Place Associates, will develop the approximately 300,000-square-foot build to-suit campus for Google. There will be two 200,000-sf buildings in the first phase, projected to break ground in the third quarter and open in the first quarter of 2017. Google has about 300 employees in Boulder. The campus will allow it to grow over time to as many as 1,500 employees. Otis and Fisk knew Google was in the market when they began assembling the site in mid-2011. They didn’t know where Google would land, but they knew there was a need for large-block office space for tech companies, and they created various development scenarios, including one with a hotel. The location has housed well-known tenants HB Woodsongs Music Store and D&K Printing, as well as a retail strip center with “dozens of tenants.” Assembling it was time-consuming and costly – to the tune of $12.15 million. “There were a lot of moving parts,” said Otis. “There was a great deal of logistics involved in managing not only the economics of the deal, but also the flow of tenants in and out of the project,” he said, adding site challenges also include bedrock and having to work with multiple ditch companies. Although Google looked outside Boulder, its goal was to remain in the city, where opportunities for big company expansions are few and far between. Local commercial real estate expert Becky Callan Gamble of Dean Callan & Co. said there aren’t a lot of viable, ready-to-go options for companies as large as Google, either in terms of development sites or empty buildings. Someone could create that opportunity “with time and patience and money,” she said. But, for Google, time was of the essence. “Staying still is really not an option. In our crazy evolution, we’ve grown quite rapidly, and we expect to continue to grow,” Scott Green, Google’s site director in Boulder, told the Boulder Planning Board at a recent hearing. Boulder City Council’s decision to not “call up,” or review, the planning board’s approval of the campus allows the project to move to building permit review. “Timing was critical for us, so the fact that we are moving forward allows us to remain on time for getting the project moving when it needs to move,” said Google spokesman Curtis Hubbard. The Google campus, being designed by Tryba Architects, will feature the kinds of employee amenities the company is known for: pingpong and pool tables, a cafeteria and other things “to keep employees engaged and excited,” said Hubbard. It also will include the company’s signature Tech Talk space for hosting community and public events. “One of the really unique things is that the campus is bisected by a public multi-use path and open space. So people walking or riding their bike in this part of Boulder will be able to go right through the campus, stop, look around and really feel that it’s welcoming to them,” Hubbard said. A central entry plaza will be built atop a 500-space, belowgrade parking garage. There also will be at least one Boulder B-cycle station, parking for 200 bicycles, bike lockers and space where employees can work on their bikes. “The proximity to the transit center was one of the keys for the company in selecting this location,” said Hubbard, noting Google provides Regional Transportation District EcoPasses for its employees. Currently about 40 percent of Google’s Boulder employees use something other than single-occupancy vehicles to get to work, and Hubbard said the company will be working with the city on ways to drive that number up. The campus will be LEED Gold certified, at minimum, and will include a 140-kilowatt rooftop photovoltaic array. Following a City Council discussion regarding the planning board’s conditional approval of the Google campus, Green released a statement that said, “We are pleased with the decision to support the previous reviews and look forward to getting the project underway. We will continue our work to be a community partner that is proud to call Boulder home.” Otis said the campus “will become an icon in Boulder that will for many years generate significant rewards for the community.” “In addition, the ancillary entrepreneurial pursuits of the employees is bound to have farreaching benefits not only for Boulder but for the entire state. I’m happy to be part of a very exciting project for Boulder and Colorado.”