Dive Brief:

• Google is expanding its presence in Seattle, and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's Vulcan Real Estate company is helping to develop its future digs just a stone’s throw from Internet retailing giant Amazon, according to The Seattle Times.
• Allen’s Vulcan Inc. is building four six-story office buildings for the search engine behemoth with 151 residential units topping off the 607,000 square feet of office space and 14,000 square feet of retail on the ground floors, resulting in two 15-story buildings.
• Construction on Google’s new office complex will start in 2017, with GLY Construction as the general contractor. The expected date of completion is sometime in 2019. Google has committed to 14 to 16 year leases, and Vulcan will lease the residential units. Vulcan also said it will kick in $4.3 million for incentive zoning fees "for affordable housing and day care."

Dive Insight:

Google and other tech companies like Amazon, Facebook and Expedia have been snagging space in and around the South Lake Union neighborhood of Seattle — an increasingly popular city in which to do business due to the engineering graduates from the University of Washington and the chance to vie for the competition’s best talent, GeekWire reported.

Including this space, Google will be nearing the one-million-square-feet mark in Washington, and, although it’s not known how many employees will work out of the new complex, it can accommodate 3,000 to 4,000. Upon completion, all Seattle Google employees will make the move from its current Seattle offices to the new space.

Google is in the midst of a construction frenzy, as the company recently re-submitted an updated design to the city of Mountain View CA, for its "Charleston East" office complex, which will tie into its existing Googleplex headquarters. The Bjarke Ingels Group design includes an opaque, tent-like, 600,000-square-foot building that will be able to house up to 3,000 employees.