CA Technologies vacates Boulder office; Google takes over space

BOULDER — CA Technologies, the New York-based software company that acquired Rally Software Development Corp. in 2015 for $490 million, has vacated its Boulder office, along with one in Fort Collins, potentially eliminating hundreds of jobs.

But the CA Technologies office space at 3333 Walnut St. didn’t remain empty for long — Google recently leased an estimated 75,000 square feet of the complex, adding to the 30,000 square feet that it subleased from CA Technologies in 2017. Google at that time occupied the second floor of the south wing. It recently took over the first floor of that wing, as well as the second floor of the north wing, Scott Green, engineering site director for Google Boulder, said in an email to BizWest.

“The growth was for existing teams,” Green said.

The expansion means that Google occupies an estimated 100,000 square feet of the 154,000-square-foot complex. Based on real estate norms for tech employers of 150 square feet per employee, that means the added space could accommodate at least 600 employees.

The Walnut Street space houses gTech, or Google Technical Services, which provides technical expertise to partners using Google products.

Google’s presence in Boulder continues to grow. In addition to the Walnut Street space, the company has Boulder offices at 2590 Pearl St., 2600 Pearl St. and 2525 28th St.

Google plans to add employees at 2930 Pearl St. in 2020, when the third building of its 300,000-square-foot main campus is completed.

In all, Google employs about 1,200 people in Boulder, Green said. The new campus alone was designed to house 1,500 employees. But the fact that Google continues to snap up available space — and has not relinquished spaces it occupied prior to construction of its new campus — means that the tech giant’s presence in Boulder could become far greater.

Google’s expansion comes as CA Technologies contracts, bringing to an end a home-grown Boulder success story in Rally Software.

Rally, which provided cloud-based solutions for managing Agile software development, was founded by Ryan Martens in 2001 and went public in 2013.

The original Rally headquarters at 3333 Walnut Street was 65,545 square feet. An additional 89,000-square-foot wing broke ground in 2013 and was completed in early 2015.

The company sold to CA Technologies two years after going public. At that time, Rally employed 500 people on four continents, according to documents filed at the time with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

After its purchase of Rally, CA Technologies was acquired by Broadcom Inc. (Nasdaq: AVGO) in 2018 for nearly $19 billion. Before that sale, CA Technologies announced in May 2018 plans to eliminate 800 jobs and vacate some facilities.

“The Fiscal 2019 Plan comprises the termination of approximately 800 employees and facility exits and consolidations,” according to a company press release issued May 2, 2018. “These actions are intended to better align the Company’s cost structure with the skills and resources required to more effectively pursue opportunities in the marketplace and execute the Company’s long-term growth strategy, which includes a particular focus on shifting more of the Company’s business to a subscription-based model.”

But soon after, Broadcom purchased CA, and rumors of additional closures and layoffs ensued.

Broadcom had maintained CA Technologies’ operations in Boulder for a period of time after the sale.  It is unclear when the company vacated offices at 3333 Walnut St. Broadcom representatives did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

There is no indication that Broadcom or CA Technologies continue to maintain a presence at the office building. There are no signs for those firms, and only Google employees are able to access the building interior.

CA Technologies also had operations on Council Tree Avenue in Fort Collins. About 220 employees worked there in 2016, the most recent data made available to BizWest. That operation also appears to be closed.

The company has not filed a WARN notice — required if layoffs meet certain thresholds — with the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment.

When the Broadcom acquisition of CA Technologies was announced in November 2018, Long Island, N.Y., newspaper Newsday reported the company was planning layoffs.

“Broadcom sent emails to all U.S. employees of its CA unit, designating 40.9 percent for layoffs and severance packages and the remaining 2,861 for retention,” according to the Newsday report.

Fort Collins and Boulder do not appear on CA Technologies’ online list of North American operations. According to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, the CA Technologies Boulder office was listed on the site as recently as November 2018. The Fort Collins operation was included on that list as recently as 2017.

Broadcom maintains a Ziegler Road facility, which is home to a semiconductor manufacturing operation that employs approximately 1,300 people. That office remains occupied.

on Facebook on LinkedIn