The tech giant is buying The Warsaw HUB, a 113,000-square-meter (1.2 million square foot) property from developer Ghelamco, amid the company's continuing expansion in the country. Google has hired more than 350 people in Poland in the past year and took space at The Warsaw HUB last year as a tenant.
The company opened its first office in Poland 15 years ago and now has more than 1,000 employees in the country. The new investment bumps capacity up to 2,500 employees, with an emphasis on the potential for future growth.
"Over the next few years, we will be investing in the construction of the next workspaces in our new office in The Warsaw HUB to ensure that it is best equipped to meet the needs of our new ways of working," Google said in a statement Monday.
"We'll be introducing new types of collaboration spaces for in-person teamwork and inclusive meeting rooms for hybrid working as well as de-densifying the offices to improve wellbeing and providing many amenities (like outdoor terraces) to make sure that we offer the best possible work environment for the many talented people that will be joining us in Warsaw in the near future," the company added.
Many of Google's employees in Warsaw work on the company's Europe cloud technology team. Google said its cloud operations in Poland is the company's largest team in Europe to work on cloud technologies.
Ghelamco couldn't be immediately reached for comment Monday on the sale. The company operates in Belgium, Poland and the United Kingdom.
The firm's website notes that The Warsaw HUB is the most innovative and most modern project in the company's history.
White & Case LLP previously assisted the company with the project in 2017, helping Ghelamco land financing from a group of various lenders. That same year, the law firm also helped the developer refinance a different property: the Warsaw Spire.
The Warsaw HUB "will be the heart of the network, a central point where all needs of modern, innovative companies converge," Jarosław Zagórski, commercial and business development director of Ghelamco Poland, said in a statement on Ghelamco's website for the property.
"The Warsaw HUB will set new, previously unknown quality standards while creating a valuable urban fabric in the very heart of Warsaw," Zagórski added.
Outside of continuing to invest in its offices in Poland, Google has also been active in providing assistance to refugees who have fled nearby Ukraine amid the invasion from Russia.
The company recently announced it was providing $10 million to organizations that are helping refugees who have come to Poland.
"We will also be using Google's spaces and resources to support those affected, including by using the Google for Startups Campus in Warsaw as a space where local NGOs can provide legal and psychological support to refugees," Google said in its statement Monday.
Counsel information on the latest purchase was not immediately available on Monday.
--Editing by Dave Trumbore.
For a reprint of this article, please contact reprints@law360.com.
