Google Unloads San Jose House Amid Plans for Transit Village

As Google moves fast to buy swaths of property in and around downtown San Jose, the tech giant made an unusual move last month: it sold land.

According to the Mercury News, citing Santa Clara County property records, Google sold a single-family home at 911 Clintonia Ave. on March 29 for $1.4 million. The property is located in the city’s Willow Glen neighborhood, which is south of the area where the tech giant has proposed a massive corporate campus.

The buyer was Mark Blaszczyk, according to the Mercury News.

Google bought the site less than four months ago as part of a package deal that included another property—a single-family home at 538 Lorraine Ave. Located in downtown San Jose, the Lorraine Avenue site is inside the area Google plans to develop. The tech giant spent $4 million on both houses, but only sold the Clintonia Avenue property.

For the past two years, Google has been on a shopping spree in downtown San Jose. Thus far, Google has spent $319.5 million acquiring land for a transit-oriented village near Diridon Station. Google’s campus will include offices, homes, restaurants and retail space. In total, the project will have room for up to 25,000 jobs.

A Google spokesperson did not immediately respond to request for comment.

5 Comments

  1. MMM, 25,000 jobs that local residents won’t get. Most google top employees come from other places and top Universities such as Stanford. The only jobs local resident will get will be in the kitchen and janitorial service. Google technically owns San Jose and Santa Clara County. Local officials have invested their money in google. Thus, google controls our local officials through the power of money. What google moving to San Jose downtown will mean for the regular resident is lots more traffic, crowds, and no ability to buy a home in San Jose. The city is not building affordable housing for low income and middle income families, so forget about the homeless population. WELCOME TO SAN JOSE CALIFORNIA OFFICIALY GOOGLELAN!

  2. @FEXXNIST – Ridiculously short-sited and erroneous comment. The Google Village development is the best thing that could possibly happen to San Jose. Plenty of local residents work in high tech and will be first in line for those Google jobs. It will also bring a huge amount of additional business opportunity to downtown, from other tech companies, to supporting service businesses, to restaurants, etc. – plenty of jobs to go around. Will housing prices go up? Absolutely. That’s why Google is locating this next to Diridon Station, which has the opportunity to become a huge public transit hub, allowing easy access to lower cost of living locales.

    Also, keep in mind that the majority of employees in large tech companies are not hardcore techie developers, they are in program/project management, sales, finance, marketing, customer success, operations, IT – all jobs which are very accessible for those with a little bit of initiative.

    • I would like to see how many local residents currently work for google; show numerical data. I have three relatives that work for google. They graduated from Stanford; they lived in south California and other states. They take the google busses from San Francisco where they live and pay high rent. Oh yes, I have tried the food google gives its employees for free three time per day. I have also witnessed all the food google wastes daily. What is the ratio of local residents and San Jose State University currently employed at Google compared to those from Stanford, other elite universities, and other states and places in the world that work for google? Google is buying San Jose and Santa Clara County. Local families are being pushed out! WELCOME TO GOOGLELAND SAN JOSE SILICON VALLEY. In ten years all people will live in expensive little cages and only be able to communicate via online.

    • So you are planning on bringing employees to your new GOOGLELAND, and have cleaning crew and other low level employees relocate out of San Jose to affordable housing and take the train to come to work. Google high paid employees will be the new Santa Clara County elite population. Low income and middle class families can move to Modesto, Merced, Manteca, and other cheaper places and engage in long commutes, taking the train, to come clean Google restrooms and cook for google employees. Poor people, you job will be just few steps away from your train ride! AMAZING ISN’t It! Gardner, AACI, Catholic Charities, and other corrupted agencies in the county, soon you will have no MediCal clients to serve since the SANTA CLARA COUNTY will have mostly residents with privatec insurance and 401K!

  3. Why you do not keep google at Mountain View? We do not need more jobs here; we have plenty. There is a business in every corner of San Jose. What we need is a little more space to drive our vehicles in the already congested streets and freeways. Google should relocate to Alaska to provide more opportunities there. There are plenty of places in the United States that need job creation opputunities. RECALL LICCARDO AND HIS GOOGLELAND!

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