Google Said to Buy Building Covering City Block in New York for 'Googleplex East'

Google is reported to be looking to buy one of the largest buildings in Manhattan, an 18-story, 2.9 million square feet (270,000 square meters) giant in which it already rents a huge amount of space.

The company has been said to be looking to expand its office space in New York since at least the beginning of the year.

Buying the entire building would give Google enough breathing room to hire more people on the East Coast.

Google is willing to pay close to $2 billion for the entire building, the New York Post reports. The building at 111 8th Avenue is the third largest in New York by square footage.

The building covers an entire city block, from New York's Eight and Ninth avenues and 15th and 16th streets in the Chelsea neighbourhood.

The current terms of the deal are said to put the price at about $690 per square foot, a decent amount by today's standards, but far less than the $1,500 per square foot it would have gotten pre-recession, the report says.

The building used to house the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and is fitted with all the amenities a company like Google would need. It has plenty of backup generators and is wired to house a tech company.

The building is also home to a Telx ISP facility so internet connectivity and bandwidth is not an issue. Space in the building is also rented to Nike, Armani, WebMD and other companies.

Google already rents about 550,000 square feet in the building, about one fifth of the space. But the company wants to grow beyond its 2,000 employees it currently has in New York.

Google is said to be one of the interested parties and, while the deal is pretty far along, it may yet fall through.