A Columbia cohort of mine, Sam Gustin, has just penned a sweet article for The Village Voice on Google’s plans to expand in the Big Apple:
For the time being, by installing itself above Chelsea’s broadband “fiber highway” at 111 Eighth Avenue, St. Arnaud explained, Google can bypass many of the major telecommunications firms and interface directly with Tier 2 service providers such as Level 3 Communications or XO Communications, which also are located in the building. This will significantly cut down the costs associated with reaching business customers on Wall Street and in the media and fashion worlds, and generally throughout the Northeast power corridor from D.C. to Boston. The arrangement also suits the Tier 2 providers, which are “thrilled because they can get content directly from Google and bypass” the major telecom and cable Tier 1 providers, St. Arnaud says.
But the advantages of Google’s new space at 111 Eighth Avenue are not merely technological. Google’s office will be highly efficient, because the lease covers nearly 300,000 square feet on just two floors, rather than the 10 or more floors that much space would take up in a traditional New York City office building, like, say, the Empire State Building, which was completed one year before 111 Eighth Avenue, in 1931. That means fewer bathrooms, fewer elevators, more efficient wiring, and less energy consumption, not to mention those large communal meeting spaces that Googlers love so much. In a way, the vast horizontal spaces afforded by 111 Eighth Avenue echo the sprawling, horizontal nature of Silicon Valley itself, perhaps best exemplified by Google’s vast campus in California.
