CRAINSNEWYORK.COM I FEBRUARY 26, 2024
Google opens huge Hudson Square site as it closes others
MWBE CONTRACTING
St. John’s Terminal gives the company a total of nearly 6 million square feet locally. 1.3 million square feet, but the single-tenant address allocates The stylish new office build- more than 400 square feet of ing that Google opened last space for each of its 3,000 workweek in Hudson Square is ers. Even when considering that some of the building is proudly forward-thinking. Mostly native plants grace its used for amenities, the allotacre and a half of gardens, and ment seems steep. The average interior space is equipped with space-to-worker ratio for years cutting-edge, hybrid-work has been a lean 150 square feet. And Alphabet's retechnology. cent corporate strategy But as a real estate BY THE would seem to frown play, the 12-story towNUMBERS on large, new office er at 550 Washington buildings. Globally in St., called St. John's 2023, Alphabet spent a Terminal, which swells hefty $1.8 billion on Google’s already massquare feet “exit charges,” or fees sive city office portfolio for each of to get out of leases at to nearly 6 million Google’s some offices, as propsquare feet across sev3,000 erty costs seem to en Manhattan sites, workers at weigh on executives’ seems to hark back to St. John’s minds. the past. Terminal “We continue to exeConceived years cute the other workago, when bosses still required employees to be in the streams to slow expense office daily and before a brutal growth,” said Ruth Porat, Alad market began pummeling phabet's president and chief tech companies, the site has investment officer, during the been unveiled at a time when company’s January earnings parent company Alphabet is call, with “optimizing our real eliminating jobs, breaking leas- estate portfolio” as a goal. The company declined to es and shaking up its real estate team. Not only is St. John’s large, at See GOOGLE on Page 22
By C. J. Hughes
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I try to apply, and I can’t get through. — Maria Tyner
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Maria Tyner, who owns a Bronx insurance and multiservice company, has applied for contracts without success. | BUCK ENNIS
LIMITED PROGRESS
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New MWBEs struggle for the city’s attention as established firms, often run by white women and Asian men, land most deals. | By Nick Garber
T
wo days and a few miles apart, two very different sides of New York City’s minority- and women-owned business world were on display earlier this month: one in a stuffy Bronx conference room and the other at a swanky breakfast inside Gracie Mansion. In the Bronx, dozens of business owners filed into a room at CUNY’s Hostos Community College, where they hoped to meet city officials who might one day award them sought-after contracts. Mayor Eric Adams’ admin-
istration organized the event, which drew exactly the kinds of people his office is trying to reach: entrepreneurs who had only recently become certified as “Minority- and Women-owned Business Enterprises.” They came with plenty of complaints about how difficult it remains to do business with the city, including that agencies don’t seem open to new faces and don’t respond to inquiries. It was a different scene two days later at the mayor’s Upper East Side residence, where an
MWBE reception brought together some of the city’s most successful entrepreneurs of color — including New York’s top 20 MWBE vendors, with contracts adding up to some $3 billion combined. That crowd had nothing but praise for Adams, a mayor who is seen as business-friendly and has set ambitious goals for increasing the city’s contract spending on MWBEs — namely, to double it to a cumulative $60 billion between 2023 and 2030. See MWBE on Page 11
Google’s new office building at 550 Washington St. in Hudson Square | BUCK ENNIS
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