Google’s Boulder campus groundbreaking ceremony slated for Aug. 4

BOULDER — Get ready for an update, Google Maps. The address for your namesake’s Boulder operation is about to change.

A groundbreaking ceremony will take place at 11:15 a.m., Aug. 4, for Phase 1 of Google Inc.’s new 300,000-square-foot campus in Boulder. Completion of the first phase, which will include 200,000 square feet in two buildings, is targeted for the first quarter of 2017, with the company then shifting from its current locations at 2590 and 2600 Pearl St. to a site a few blocks east near the intersection of 30th and Pearl streets in the new Pearl Place Google Boulder Campus.

Dignitaries expected to appear at the groundbreaking include Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, Boulder mayor Matt Appelbaum and others.

Forum Real Estate Group LLC, based in Glendale, is developing Pearl Place. The total project will include three 100,000-square-foot buildings rising four stories each. The project will enable Google to expand from its present 300 employees in Boulder to as many as 1,500 over the next decade.

Liz Hanson, economic vitality coordinator for the city of Boulder, said the groundbreaking is an affirmation of the attributes that entice many businesses to want to locate or expand in Boulder, such as the educated work force and quality of life. It’s also a stabilizing force for Boulder’s economy, she said, comparing it to the likes of IBM Corp., Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. and Medtronic, which all have major local operations that help anchor the job picture.

One of the questions that always surrounds Boulder’s burgeoning tech scene is whether growing companies will be able to stay in Boulder once they reach a certain size.

“I think Google, at the number of employees they had, were kind of at that point (if the company wanted to still have a large presence in Colorado),” Hanson said. “To the fact that Google was able to find a site that gives them kind of a 10-year plan … I think that’s stabilizing for the company and also for the community.”

The three buildings on Google’s new campus will wrap around the existing JPMorgan Chase Bank on the southwest corner of 30th and Pearl streets, and will be just west of the Target store and north of the Two Nine North residential complex.

Earlier this year, developers had mentioned a $150 million price tag for the project, though an official for Forum this week declined to disclose an updated cost for Phase 1, which includes a building on 30th Street, as well as a building in the center of the site. No date has been set for groundbreaking of Phase 2 — consisting of the third and final building, which would front Pearl Street.

Demolition of existing buildings on the 4.3-acre site began earlier this month, with all now removed except for one on the Phase 2 portion that will be used as a temporary construction trailer.

The Google campus made it in just under the wire as it relates to a pair of commercial development fees and restrictions passed by city council this year. The project had already gained approval prior to a two-year moratorium on exemptions to the city’s height limits going into effect. Phase 1, meanwhile, isn’t subject to Boulder’s affordable-housing linkage fee that will be charged on new commercial development in the city, because the project was already in the technical document review stage when the fee was approved by city council. The impact of the fee on the second phase depends on timing because the fee will be phased in over time at different levels.

Google’s history in Boulder stretches back to 2006, when the company acquired Boulder’s @Last Software Inc., maker of the SketchUp 3-D modeling software. Google sold SketchUp in 2012 but has continued to grow in Boulder, both organically and through acquisitions. Google’s Nest Labs, based in Palo Alto, acquired Boulder-based Revolv Inc. in October 2014. Revolv developed a hardware hub that, coupled with an app, enabled smart-home devices to communicate.

Forum Real Estate’s portfolio includes a variety of high-end residential projects in nine states, with commercial developments located along the Colorado Front Range, including the Lofts on the Hill, a student-apartment project with retail located near the University of Colorado Boulder campus.

Reporter Joshua Lindenstein contributed to this story.

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