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Google pulled out of the talks to lease the Sorting Office, a seven-story office building under construction on Dublin’s docks.
The news will send a chill to the Irish commercial real estate sector, which had been bracing for the shock of an anticipated shift towards more people working from home even after the Covid pandemic subsides.
Google, owned by Alphabet Inc, has “decided not to proceed with the lease of the Classification Office,” a spokeswoman confirmed to the Bloomberg news agency.
The decision not to add space to Google’s Dublin offices is likely to reflect the belief among business leaders that more staff are ready to work from home in the future as a result of the experience during the Covid shutdown. Ulster Bank halted its search for a new Dublin headquarters over the summer to reevaluate what it believes are the new post-Covid space requirements.
In July, Google CEO Sundar Pichai told employees that most of its global workforce of 200,000 people will have the option to work from home until the end of June 2021.
Any withdrawal from the traditional office will be a major blow to the commercial property sector, largely backed by pension funds, which radically changed over the past decade to focus on building very high-specification, large-scale, and located offices. at the center, targeting the needs of foreign direct investment companies and the large-scale digital economy in particular.
Google itself helped drive that change with its 2011 deal to buy the Montevetro building on Dublin’s Grand Canal for € 99.9 million.
The Sorting Office being developed by Pat Crean’s Marlet Group at the site of An Post’s former Cardiff Lane Sorting Office is a 18,766 square meter upscale property large enough to house 2,000 employees.
It is located near the Montevetro building, as well as the Facebook headquarters and the Bord Gáis Theater on the Dublin Docks.
Google had been in talks to lease the offices since at least October, which are near its existing campus on Barrow Street, where the tech giant had around 8,000 employees working at the start of the pandemic in offices that feature workspaces, dining rooms. and leisure facilities. including a pool and gym on site.
Online editors
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