
Google Plans New Headquarters, and a City Fears Being Overrun - sethbannon
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/02/26/technology/google-plans-new-headquarters-and-a-city-fears-being-overrun.html
======
smutticus
As a bay area resident who regularly has to listen to people whine about 'all
them outsiders moving in', I have no sympathy for the residents of MV. Build
some dense housing around here and stop whining. We don't all need ranch homes
with 3 parking spaces. Build up, build dense, and build mass transit.

> “Our problem is that we have too many good jobs,” said Leonard M. Siegel, a
> 66-year-old environmental activist who was recently elected to the City
> Council. “Everyone else wishes they were in our situation, but it’s a crisis
> for the people here.”

If this person is actually an environmentalist then they should welcome my
message of build up, build dense, and build mass transit. Per-capita carbon
production goes down as density goes up. Low-density urban living, think
suburbs, are terrible at keeping per-capita carbon production low. An actual
environmentalist would welcome an opportunity to develop dense urban
environments free from a reliance on fossil fuels.

If you want to have a low carbon footprint; live in a place like Manhatten,
eat vegan, sell your car and don't travel. In other words, if you claim to
want environmental policy, you should be working to make that lifestyle
accessible to more people.

> “Nobody wants change,” said Gilbert Wong, a councilman in Cupertino, Apple’s
> hometown.

I'm sure if I told this person they were a conservative they would take
offense. But what other way is there to read this? These people are
misappropriating the term conservationist. We're interested in protecting the
trees, not your lawn.

Places like Mountain View or Palo Alto could be examples of a new kind of
sustainable dense urban living. Instead they're completely wedded to
automobiles and a mid 19th century obsession with detached home ownership.

~~~
tsax
Exactly. It's a travesty that Silicon Valley looks like a suburb in 2015. It
should've been a great example of a dense, clean, urban region, which would
also mitigate the commuter problems and the pressure on San Francisco rents.

~~~
rhino369
I was shocked when I first visited Silicon Valley. It looked like Skokie, IL.

Arlington, VA is an example of a suburb who successfully created a densish
environment by building a subway corridor.

~~~
tsax
+1. Haha, what an apt comparison. Yes, Arlington is a nice model to adopt, but
needs to be even denser.

------
davidf18
They should move to Manhattan, where I live. Google already owns the third
largest building with 2,800,000 sq feet. With our fantastic subway system,
whatever they would rent/build would be a far, far, greener and environmental
solution than have 20,000 employees commute by car (or the controversial
Google Bus).

BTW, the old World Trace Center Towers 1 and 2 held 50,000 employees.

The reason for the increasing price of housing has to do with overly
restrictive zoning codes and not the demand. The zoning creates artificial
scarcity and it is the scarcity and the increasing costs of land that results
that is the cause for increasing home prices. Using politics to create
artificial scarcity through this "rent seeking" is a means of taking wealth
from others as opposed to wealth creation which benefits all.

In an efficient market, there would not be the zoning code restrictions that
limit housing density (see Harvard Economist Edward Glaeser's writings for
more info).

~~~
virtuallynathan
Yea, 111 8th Ave, most of which (afaik) is a datacenter. They've been kicking
out the datacenter tenants when their leases end.

~~~
jedc
> most of which (afaik) is a datacenter

Ha! Nope. While there has been some datacenter space in the building, the vast
majority is office space. (It's way cheaper to build data centers in Iowa and
the Carolinas than in Manhattan!)

Google has been taking over more and more office space as leases end, though.
It makes for quite a confusing office map to get from floor to floor. (Lots of
partial office floors don't connect well to other partial office floors.)

------
mbillie1
While I'm sympathetic to the situation folks find themselves in with
skyrocketing housing prices due to an influx of tech workers, sentiments like
“Nobody wants change,” and "[residents who] want to halt the city’s growth"
are unrealistic.

The same thing happened in places like Rockland County, NY - once a small,
rural community of primarily Norwegian immigrants, it has seen skyrocketing
property taxes, cost of living and population due to the increased population
/ desirability of NYC over the past say 60 years, as well as the Tappan Zee
Bridge making it a viable home for Manhattan-working commuters. The residents
(at least some of the old time residents, whose number includes several of my
family members) are understandably upset, but you simply don't get to control
your community size in this fashion. If you want to live in a small, rural
community and find your lifelong hometown increasingly developed, the
unfortunate reality is that you are not the only human being who wants her
peace and quiet, and you may have to move.

~~~
rayiner
What makes it totally impossible for me to sympathize with these folks, as
opposed to the ones being pushed out by rising rents in SF, is that as
homeowners rising property values make it _easier_ for them to move elsewhere.
If you bought a house in a sleepy suburb in the 1980's, well now it's worth $1
million+. You can get a wonderful property almost anywhere in the country for
half that and pocket the rest. Or you can stay and enjoy your new-found
wealth.

~~~
protomyth
"Or you can stay and enjoy your new-found wealth."

In most places, if your $200,000 house now has a value of $1 million, you
cannot stay since property taxes will increase. So, you can sell and leave,
but staying is often not an option particularly for people on a fixed income.

~~~
drobertduke
In California we have this absurd voter-approved law we call Proposition 13,
which caps property rates. It effectively eliminates the only "wealth tax" we
have, leaving our schools perineally underfunded and removing incentives to
upzoning from both city governments and home-owners! It's a real piece of
work.

~~~
protomyth
So, the rate is capped, but what does that mean if the value of the property
goes up? Let's say the tax assessment went from $200,000 to $1 million, how
much would the yearly payment go up?

// it is a bit off-putting to down vote everyone not up on CA law.

~~~
dragonwriter
The tax basis value can only increase 2% per year, except when certain
qualifying events (transfers of ownership, mostly, but IIRC some improvements
qualify, at least as to the value added by the improvement, as well.)

So, given the prop 13 maximum tax rate of 1% and maximum increase in tax basis
value of 2% per annum, a property that was fully taxed at a basis value of
$200,000 in 1985($2,000 annual tax) that increases in value to $1 million --
or even $10 million -- in 2015 would have a tax basis value of $362,272 and a
total annual property tax bill of about $3,623.

------
Lewisham
One thing that this article doesn't mention is that Mountain View is soul-
crushingly boring. It would be one thing if it was a place of character and
interest that was being eroded (I can sympathize with some elements of the SF
community on that front), but it is not and it never was. It's a boring suburb
with no identifiable features. Palo Alto, Los Gatos and Santa Cruz and other
towns have something to them. I don't understand what the "residentialists"
are trying to protect.

I'd love to live nearer the Googleplex, but I wouldn't move into Mountain
View.

Disclaimer: I work for Google, but I had this opinion of MTV far before
joining them, and I have no voting rights in MTV politics. I live in Santa
Cruz and much prefer it.

~~~
mark_l_watson
I worked at Google MTV in 2013 and my wife and I thought that Mountain View
had a lot to offer: good restaurants, bookstores, shopping, and the nice
(huge!) movie theatre complex very close to the building where I worked. San
Francisco, Santa Cruz, San Jose, and Monterey were all close for more
entertainment. My only complaint was that it cost us $6000+ per month to live
there. I quit and went back home to Arizona where my income is smaller but the
cost of living is very inexpensive.

~~~
ojbyrne
Also Shoreline Amphitheatre, which regularly gets reasonably good concerts.

~~~
DannyBee
Except that they completely ruined the sound there in order to protect the
houses that got built too close to it.

~~~
muzz
Where are the houses that are close to the amphitheater?

~~~
pm24601
Right here:
[https://www.google.com/maps/@37.4160266,-122.0710641,17z](https://www.google.com/maps/@37.4160266,-122.0710641,17z)

~~~
stevesearer
That seems pretty far away considering the Santa Barbara Bowl is very close to
homes and can be heard quite a few blocks away. To my knowledge, shows need
only finish by 10pm.

[https://goo.gl/maps/MFy1h](https://goo.gl/maps/MFy1h)

~~~
pm24601
I am further away than that - and I guarantee you that I can hear concerts at
Shoreline.

------
rayiner
> “Our problem is that we have too many good jobs,” said Leonard M. Siegel, a
> 66-year-old environmental activist who was recently elected to the City
> Council. “Everyone else wishes they were in our situation, but it’s a crisis
> for the people here.”

Boo-hoo.

Also, I think it's ironic for an "environmental activist" to defend the
existing suburban wasteland status quo. More development could make places
like Mountain View less car dependent, and reduce how many schlep too/from SF
on a daily basis. If these folks really cared about the environment, instead
of prohibiting growth they would ban these sprawling office parks miles away
from public transit and push tech companies into high-density development near
the Caltrain.

~~~
bluedino
Is there the office space available for Google to house say 3,000 people in
one building or even 1 block in SF? I'm sure there's no room to build a new
building that would be big enough to hold that many people.

There are quite a few high-rises in the financial district but are they
vacant?

~~~
rayiner
I was thinking mid-high rise buildings constructed in Mountain View near the
train station. I'm going to use Apple as a comparison because we have more
information about their costs. Their new $5 billion complex provides about 3
million square feet on 175 acres. Northwestern's medical campus in downtown
Chicago, near where I used to live, is 4.25 million square feet across two
small city blocks (9 acres). Mid-rise 20-25 story buildings provide a _lot_ of
floor space!

Just to put things into perspective: the two blocks bounded by Evelyn,
Franklin, Dana, and Bryant near the Caltrain station in Mountain View, which
is currently just nondescript strip mall, is 8.5 acres. We're not talking
about SF or NYC where it might be hard to find that much contiguous space.

~~~
ojbyrne
I'm confused, or you haven't been there in a while. In those two blocks,
there's a brand new class 1 office development, a large condo complex, a
popular bar, and a 1 star Michelin restaurant.

~~~
nerfhammer
I believe the parent's point may have been that it is an utter waste to keep
areas steps away from major mass transit hubs zoned for low density commercial
use.

------
CmonDev
Google is welcome to London: there is a desperate situation sadly - no major
competition for tech talent is making salaries very stagnant for everyone.

Also: _" “If you brought 5,000 people in and they all work for Google and they
said, ‘We want you to vote for this candidate,’ they can own the town.”"_ \-
that is how democracy works, e.g. attracting welfare earners to vote for those
who will give them more welfare.

------
thrillgore
If Google thinks this will be an issue dealing with Mountain View, they'll
just go with a whole new location. This isn't brinksmanship.

~~~
jdmichal
Because I'm sure those 20,000 employees are all just waiting with their bags
packed ready to follow Google where ever they decide to settle down... Or that
they are all completely fungible and just picking up another 20,000 somewhere
else won't interrupt operations at all.

~~~
skuhn
Yes, they will follow Google to Sunnyvale or Cupertino or any other of the
five to ten towns within a 20 mile drive from Mountain View.

No one is so beholden to their almost indistinguishable south bay suburb that
they wouldn't venture across the border to go to work -- these towns are 20
square miles at best.

~~~
jdmichal
My original understanding of the post I was replying to was hinting at a much
bigger move than 20 miles. Upon rereading it, I potentially erroneously added
that context within my own head.

~~~
skuhn
Makes sense, it does seem like they would have a harder time retaining people
if they moved to Boise.

That would be pretty sweet if a giant tech company like Google packed up and
left Silicon Valley. It's going to take big moves like that to get a real
exodus rolling.

------
refurb
It's always somewhat entertaining to listen to cities who want to have great
employment opportunities, but at the same time don't want to deal with any of
the negatives that come along with it.

------
hesdeadjim
I've lived in Boulder for eight years now and I'm excited to see what a major
Google presence could do for the tech community here. In general I've found it
hard to hire or convince people to relocate, but with Google committing to the
area it might become an easier sell.

I also understand the fear long-term residents of Boulder have for a change
like this. From their point of view the town has grown from a hippy little
mountain town into a very expensive yuppy enclave. Housing prices are
extremely high for Colorado, and unless you have a high paying job you usually
end up commuting in from the surrounding towns on increasingly congested
roadways. Adding >1000 highly paid engineers into the mix certainly won't help
to alleviate that.

~~~
monocasa
A lot of the Boulder local politics around "don't change anything" is really
just code for "lets not build anymore housing so the property values continue
to skyrocket".

I'm really starting to get tired of it...

------
bootload
_"... That success has brought Mountain View loads of tax dollars and a 3.3
percent unemployment rate, as well as skyrocketing home prices and intolerable
gridlock. Good and bad, tech is responsible for most of it ..."_

Now if you can figure out how to decentralise corporations, imagine the amount
of time, space and resources you could save.

hint: why do digital companies still require a workforce to all meet at one
physical location, every day?

------
evtothedev
It is so exciting that people have started to couple the creation of offices
with the creation of housing!

~~~
yourapostasy
It unfortunately won't really solve the housing and housing-related challenges
that the article portrayed stirring up so much vocal ire in MV. Many of the
adverse effects (traffic congestion, pollution, rising property taxes, etc.)
are first- and second-order effects of real estate pricing increases, and
simply allocating land for residential development won't retard those
increases.

One possible way to short-circuit those pricing increases is for an employer
to lock down a very large tract, and never let parcels in it exchange
ownership again. Structure an ownership model where employees still buy into
their parcel under a co-op style or leasehold ownership, with all such
proceeds minus operational expenses (property taxes, insurance, maintenance,
repair, etc.) dumped into a total market index fund/fund-set (with communally-
voted percentage of gains allocated to improvements and/or expansion) or at
employee discretion into a money-market fund, and when employees leave employ
and residence, their share of proceeds they put in plus their share of gains
(if any) are returned to them. This locks in the underlying price basis to
inception year which all future employees' residential costs are biased
towards, retards real estate inflation in the tract's parcels to just imputed
value assigned for property tax purposes by the municipality, captures and
redirects overall real estate inflation effects upon wages into salaries and
the fund, which ends up as real inflation-adjusted income in employees' hands
when they leave.

Employers like Google who want the accompanying productivity benefits of
ancillary services like on-campus dining get manifold benefits from
structuring a residential community right around the office. Including but not
limited to: 10 minute commute for everyone leaving more time to enjoy life and
work, no cars inside the tract with only biking/walking/PRT delivering
increased health benefits and lower healthcare costs, coordinated massive
volume purchasing of residential services in a single geographic location
making possible even more time saving services like
landscaping/housekeeping/childcare/laundry/handyman/insurance, etc. In an
already-developed community like MV, cultural/entertainment/shopping venues
are sure to sprout along the borders of such a tract to give variety, if such
venues are not already woven throughout the community.

There are secondary cost savings from choosing to plan on the decades-long
timeline of such a development built as a single project. For Google
specifically, heat co-generation from data centers can be redirected for use
in the residential areas. All residences can be constructed to say something
like PassivHaus standards to use 1/5 to 1/10 of normal energy, and
simultaneously mount solar PV everywhere there is a roof or shading desired.
These energy savings drop straight to the bottom line as decreased
compensation inflation pressure over time. Cooperation and integration with
the wider community's educational and healthcare institutions can accommodate
exception cases like special needs education and high-end healthcare, without
blowing out costs or compromising quality of on-campus schooling and
healthcare. The entire tract's property taxes can be negotiated on a
commercial (commonly given more leeway in most municipalities) basis in a
single negotiation more likely to yield lower individual property taxes per
residence.

The cost is reduced location choice for the employees who voluntarily choose
to live in the tract, and when to move away; but real estate inflation has
generally economically segregated most metro areas and already reduced
choices, and residential moves already commonly accompany job changes as
increased traffic congestion in most metro areas make all but the most short
geographic distance disparities between old and new jobs very grueling. There
are also many cultural costs to address commonly associated with "company
town"-type issues; homogenized and boring (though others have pointed out
boring is a feature not a bug for many though not all when raising a family)
milieu, stifling social setting, etc. Many possible trade offs and solutions
for these challenges, though.

There are variations of this kind of company town development around the
world. The largest and most comprehensive ones I know of are Kiruna in Sweden
and the various towns run by Saudi Aramco in Saudi Arabia. They aren't a
panacea, and there are more drawbacks I haven't covered, but they are very
effective at controlling direct and indirect COL costs that put upward salary
pressure on a company that are out of most companies' control, without
significantly compromising quality of life for median employees.

There is enormous cultural pressure against this sort of tactic, however. Not
least of which is the tremendous buy-in of the general public (including tech
industry participants) to the sales story of ever-increasing housing prices as
an integral part of every family's financial planning. If you are in any
industry outside of real estate and its related sibling industries, it is to
your ultimate advantage to treat most real estate and its related operational
costs (that is, virtually all price increases past inception of land purchase)
as a straight deadweight loss. Aside from real estate and related companies,
real estate is a large factor typically in companies in trouble (like Sears or
Radio Shack) or in commoditized industries (like McDonalds), but only because
of real estate's unique asset characteristics due to many
economic/tax/financial/legal structural factors that no other asset possesses
in the same combination. If you are a Google or a GM, you want your
investors/customers/employees to know you for what you innovate and do, not
your real estate holdings, because that is where the big growth multipliers
are to be consistently found in the future.

------
pm24601
__MOST COMMENTATORS ON THIS THREAD ARE WRONG __

Wow. As a non-Googler, Mountain View resident who owns a home, I can say that
the vast majority of the commenters mischaracterize problem, Lenny Siegel and
the MV City Council, Google and everything.

I should also add that I regularly attend CC meetings,etc.

Basic background:

1) Google until recently basically ignored Mountain View south of 101. Until
recently Google didn't own anything south of 101.

2) Google is not going anywhere. Mountain View is right next to Moffett Air
field. This is where Larry and Sergey park their 767 (
[http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/11/googles-3-top-executives-
ha...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/11/googles-3-top-executives-
have-8-private-jets/) ) - Maybe Sunnyvale would be an alternative but I really
doubt there are too many spots where L and S can be in walking distance of
their 767. Furthermore Google is leasing a shit ass land from NASA to expand
on.

3) Its not just Google: Google, LinkedIn, Intuit, Symantec, all have HQs here.
Microsoft/Nokia also have their research centers here.

4) Google, et.al. subsides all services at their HQ as a result outside
retail/restaurants have pretty much died north of 101. This results in local
business owners/voters complaining to city council.

5) Google woke up to the political problem when MV CC told Google that they
were not going to be allowed build a connection bridge across Stevens Creek
Trail for buses. ( a trail that MV residents worked 25 years to create )

6) Google land purchases have resulted in increases in real-estate taxes,
however Google generates NO sales tax revenue for the city. (same problem with
the other companies)

7) Land in North Bayshore has gotten so expensive that there is serious talk
about putting a building on top of the VTA North County Maintenance Yard.

8) Mountain View renters have seen Y/Y increases of about 20-25%. A 2
bedroom/2 bath apartment goes for $3300.

9) The city planners have gotten so many building requests that the city has
no staff to deal with the requests.

10) The school districts have real problems keeping teachers - turnover for
some schools runs 6-10%.

11) Non-tech workers are being forced out - you know people like teachers,
waiters, security guards. The MV Building inspectors have found entire
families living in a single room ( [http://mv-voice.com/news/2013/07/26/high-
cost-housing-create...](http://mv-voice.com/news/2013/07/26/high-cost-housing-
creates-desperate-living-conditions) )

12) The 3 new city council members are all pro-housing. The anti-housing
candidates were rejected. Therefore comments along the lines of : stop whining
and do something - well the new city council is doing something. Specifically,
demanding that more housing gets built and less office space. We are trying to
make room for the new people. In many cases these are our children.

13) Google to its credit is starting to throw some money at Mountain View
Capital Improvement Project list to help out.

14) Google, Mountain View are working out a traffic management plan to reduce
solo drivers - the whole of north bayshore is only accessible by 3 roads.
Residents who live in north bayshore right now cannot get to/from their house
between 8:30 and 10 and 4:30 and 6.

I might add more to this list but I think this is a good start.

~~~
swimfar
This is a good post for those not familiar with all the details. But I think
the rent you listed is unfair. Certainly there are apartments that expensive,
but you can get a nice 2bed/2bath apartment for quite a bit less(though it
probably won't have a hot tub ;) ). My friend lives in Mountain view and found
a newly refinished 2bed/2bath for $2500. It's a 10-15 min walk to downtown and
shopping. He had an ad up on craigslist for a month before he found someone
else to move in with him. Who knows what the rent will be next year, though.

~~~
pm24601
The rent number was from a co-worker who is renting in MV.

------
bonn1
> City Fears Being Overrun

What does the city exactly fear?

~~~
delucain
From what the article says, the city fears losing control over its local
government because Google employees would outnumber the rest of the voting
citizenship. They seem to want to handle this addition of houses and
infrastructure slowly, but if Google employees have a majority in the vote for
local issues, they could move ahead as fast as Google wants, since it's in
their best interest to keep their employer growing.

~~~
CalRobert
Good. Most of the peninsula is currently held in the grip of NIMBYs who hate
trains, hate dense housing, and love freeways and environmentally damaging
sprawl. Part of the reason SF costs so damn much is because it's so hard to
have an urban lifestyle anywhere but those 49 square miles (and Berkeley and
Oakland, which I quite like)

~~~
polarix
There is a reason to hate "trains" when it's fucking Caltrain with at-grade
crossings and retarded federal rules about fucking horns all night long. Half
the fucking Peninsula is unusable for sleeping as it is.

~~~
pm24601
Oh you mean the horns that this mother ignored?
[http://www.ktvu.com/story/28181718/caltrain-service-shut-
dow...](http://www.ktvu.com/story/28181718/caltrain-service-shut-down-after-
menlo-park-accident)

The horns are used to try to get people to not get killed.

~~~
polarix
Perhaps people who are driving could consider not driving around the railroad
gate (which was working when the idiot in that article decided to commit
suicide).

There are remarkably few good ways out for humans in our society, so this kind
of spectacle is often what they end up resorting to.

~~~
pm24601
There is no indication that this mother intended to commit suicide.

------
blueskin_
De-paywalled: [https://archive.today/Atr4E](https://archive.today/Atr4E)

