Google search lands Internet giant in the heart of Chelsea

Volume Number 1 Issue Number 3 | October 13 - 19, 2006

AP Photo/Mark Lennihan

Google employees Erica Baker, left, and Raiford Storey at work in the company’s new Chelsea office space on Mon., Oct. 2. The inflatable red exercise balls are part of the office’s playful atmosphere.

By Corey Binns

Chelsea business owners, real estate agents and community leaders are welcoming Google to the neighborhood with their arms open wide.

The Internet search company completed its move from cramped Times Square offices to three airy, custom-renovated floors in 111 Eighth Ave. on Oct. 2. The building spans the entire block between 15th and 16th Sts. and Eighth and Ninth Aves. and previously housed the Port Authority headquarters. It offers Googlers 300,000 sparkling square feet of open space that they traverse on scooters, using color-coordinated walls and aptly titled conference rooms such as the Cloisters, which marks North, as their compass. As long as the more than 500 New York-based Google employees stick to scooters and public transportation, local community leaders are happy to have them.

“I think it can be nothing but good for the neighborhood when any new business comes in,” said Cheryl Kupper, former president and current member of the Council of Chelsea Block Associations. “There will be more people on the street, more people buying stuff and using our services.”

Google’s prominence, having just purchased the video-sharing Web site YouTube for $1.65 billion, suggests it will be a long-term tenant in the neighborhood. While the company is based in Mountain View, Cal., and has 8,000 employees worldwide, Chelsea now currently houses Google’s second largest engineering group and largest advertising office.

The influx of workers into the neighborhood, which will continue to grow according to a Google spokesperson, could bring a boom for services that cater to young professionals, such as catering, dry cleaning and car services. It may also make happy hour and the evening at hip places in the Meatpacking District even more crowded.

Plus, with less than a quarter of Googlers driving to the New York office and Google urging employees to use public transportation, traffic shouldn’t be too much of a problem for the neighborhood.

“It’s a unique space that’s Googly and convenient,” said Elizabeth Hamon Reid, a Google software engineer. “Chelsea is a great, vibrant neighborhood and it matches with what we wanted. It’s just great to come into the office and have people say they’re excited to have moved.”

While Google’s move into the building across Ninth Ave. from Chelsea Market came as a surprise to many local business people in the Chelsea Market, most looked forward to seeing more business.

Although business hasn’t picked up significantly at Eleni’s cookie shop, last Monday, Google ordered cookie tins from assistant manager Joy Johnson. Amy’s Bread owner Amy Scherber has noticed a bigger lunchtime crowd, but said she doesn’t know whether patrons are Google employees or not. Last week was also busier at 202, a restaurant with outdoor seating on Ninth Ave. that looks out on Google’s new home.

“We knew they were coming, and we were hoping they’d come in,” said Oscar Henquet, director of restaurant operations. “But we haven’t seen any corporate cards yet.”

One reason for this absence may be due to Google’s policy of offering employees free in-house meals and a game room. Employees will be served in two cafes, one of which, located on the eighth floor, has yet to be completed. To let off steam in the office, there’s a game room that includes a ping-pong table, a pool table and even a massage chair for those hard-working engineers.

To take a breather from the office, Googlers are heading downstairs for coffee breaks. The Starbucks that shares space in the bottom floor of the same building, at the corner of Ninth Ave. and 15th St., appears to be full of employees from Google.

Google’s computers may also bring big business to local merchants, and encourage more companies that sell hardware and software. Tekserve, the Apple computer repair and sales store on W. 23rd St., has yet to sell any items to Google, but hopes to soon.

“As a tech company we use their products and we’d love to provide services to them — I’m guessing they probably have one or two computers over there — and offer services we’ve been offering everyone in Chelsea for the last 20 years,” said Charlie Thomas, Tekserve director of corporate sales.

Coffee and computers aren’t the only items people in the new office will be purchasing. The real estate market may also get a rise from the Internet behemoth’s new address. Thanks to Google salaries, brokers predict a boom in apartment sales in the neighborhood, with the new developments along the High Line being especially attractive to the young employees.

“They are a company that has deep pockets that Wall Street likes,” said Corcoran broker Peter Comitini. “In general the real estate market likes what Wall Street likes in this town.”

Other technology businesses, large and small, have recently been lured to the wide-open spaces in the west of Chelsea. Google’s move may make the area more attractive to businesses that may not have considered the neighborhood before.

“It will help diversify industry in that area,” said Omar Wasow, a technology analyst and strategic advisor for Community Connect, a Soho-based Internet company specializing in Web sites geared toward ethnic groups, such as BlackPlanet.com and MiGente.com. “It used to be residential and service-oriented industries,” Wasow said of Chelsea. “Now there’s a real Fortune 500 company there.”

Many older warehouses and large buildings in the neighborhood have been renovated to accommodate high-speed Internet connections. Companies such as Google have gravitated to the open, loftlike feeling of some of these buildings. Google’s offices were designed with glass walls and low cubicle dividers to foster communication and creativity.

Ask.com, a large new startup conglomerate, has leased space in the new Frank Gehry-designed building being completed across from Chelsea Piers.

Does the trend of startups setting up shop in New York City mean they’re moving out of California?

“I think Google is trying to set up a salon in Chelsea to draw from the creative pool there and see what sparks might ignite,” said Derek Gordon, vice president of marketing at Technorati, a West Coast-based dot-com that specializes in tracking blogs. “But I don’t think it’s an end of startups in Silicon Valley or San Francisco.”

Gordon points to the latest startups hanging shingles in Chelsea more as an indication that venture capital is flowing freely again, much as it did from 1998 to 2001, than as a move away from California.

The original New York-based “Silicon Alley” that dates back to the first dot-com era was more hype than reality, according to Wasow. But now, the city’s seeing a true boom in the industry. Google’s presence bodes well for New York City as a growing hub of high-tech entrepreneurship.

“I know from my experience with startups here in San Francisco, people spend lots of hours in the neighborhood, they spend so much of their lives in the neighborhood,” Gordon said. “I hope that people in Chelsea are embracing this new round of enthusiasm and this new round of innovation. It’s great for local economies.”