Google. The tech and media darling synonymous with whip-smart employees bringing in six-figure salaries and a global brand that carries instant cachet and prestige. It’s the kind of company for which cities and towns roll out the red carpet when a new Google corporate campus is being proposed.
“Google is probably the most transformative company in history,” said Sean Maher, executive director of the Downtown Boulder Business Improvement District. “Any community in the country would bend over backward and give millions of dollars in incentives.”
Well, any community besides Boulder, perhaps.
Last month, the city gave the OK to , capable of one day accommodating as many as 1,500 workers. But the green light didn’t come before a chorus of critics sounded grave warnings about the potential consequences of allowing the 4-acre project — which will rank among Google’s 10 largest locations in the United States by employee count — to move forward.
The company already has nearly 350 employees at four locations in the city.
The objections, voiced at public meetings and , centered on fears that an expanded Google presence could negatively affect affordable housing, traffic congestion and Boulder’s sense of community.
Spense Havlick, a former Boulder councilman, wrote in a column last month that residents “should ask for some offsets to mitigate the future pressures” from Google, which in 2013 had revenues of nearly $60 billion. He suggested a list of prerequisites for the project, including that Google provide EcoPasses to its employees, bus in workers who live more than a mile from the campus and feature ground-floor retail to lessen the campus’ potential office-park feel.
Judy Amabile, president of Boulder-based Polar Bottle, cautioned in a column that “our experiment with Google should be carefully watched.”
Tom Clark, CEO of the Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation, said Boulder’s vigorous debate over a prospective Google campus was unique to the city of 103,000.
“You simply wouldn’t see that kind of reaction anywhere else,” he said.
On the other hand, Clark said Boulder has the luxury to be picky in its land use approvals process, given its desirable, outdoor-oriented vibe and already booming tech and entrepreneurial scene.
“It has a brand unto itself,” he said. “It’s almost like scarcity creates desire in Boulder.”
To be fair, Councilman George Karakehian said, those sounding cautionary notes about Google hardly represent the majority of Boulderites. He said most of the objections are coming from a small contingent “who still think there should be tepees here.”
“It’s the same group complaining about the same things — about congestion and traffic,” Karakehian said.
The majority of residents, he said, are happy to have the Mountain View, Calif.-based tech behemoth widen its footprint in town.
Curtis Hubbard, a local spokesman for Google, pointed out that the company’s proposal passed the planning board in early December with only one dissenting vote and a couple of weeks later .
The company had no problems with the way Boulder vetted its project, which will be built in two phases starting this year, he said.
“We felt the (approvals) process overall resulted in a better project,” Hubbard said.
He said Google conceded to some city concerns, providing setbacks at the upper level of the three four-story buildings planned for the site. And the company will extend EcoPasses to its employees at the new campus like it does now for its Boulder workers, he said.
Forty percent of Google’s current Boulder workforce live in the city and 71 percent live in Boulder County, Hubbard said.
He added some of the issues raised — like impacts on housing stock in a city hemmed in by acres of open space it established over many years — are much bigger than Google.
“The affordable housing conversation in Boulder has been taking place for decades and will continue to take place,” Hubbard said.
Polar Bottle’s Amabile said it’s a legitimate discussion when looking at any large-scale project in Boulder. She doesn’t oppose a Google expansion in and of itself but said there shouldn’t be a sycophantic “swoon” over the company simply because it’s Google.
“If Ford Motor Co. wanted to build a 1,500-employee campus here, it would have a harder time,” she said.
Amabile said her concern — shared by others in the city — is that an influx of well-paid Google employees will put more upward pressure on sky-high home prices in Boulder, further pinching the affordable housing market there.
“We don’t have a lack of jobs here — we have a lack of housing,” she said.
Councilwoman Mary Young, who was alone in wanting to call up the Google plan for review at the council meeting last month, said she would have liked to have seen a “commercial linkage fee” charged on the project that would have gone toward funding affordable housing.
She also expressed concern about how Google’s campus might exacerbate traffic in the city. According the U.S. Census Bureau, Boulder has slightly more than 80,000 jobs, of which 62,000 are held by those who commute in from outside the city. More than 16,000 Boulderites leave the city for work.
“How do we address that impact?” Young asked.
Boulder does not charge employees who work in the city a “head tax,” as is the case in Denver.
Elizabeth Payton, the sole planning board member to vote against the Google project, said that although the campus will feature a pedestrian path, it doesn’t have the kind of overall walking infrastructure and compatibility with the surrounding neighborhood that is desired.
Google facilities usually feature their own cafeterias and enough amenities that make them self-sufficient to a fault, despite the campus’ location near the future bus rapid transit station at Boulder Junction.
“It’s hard to see it as a neighborhood with an insular compound there,” she said.
But Payton, who admits that even her relatives in Kentucky expressed disbelief at Boulder’s cautious approach to the project, said robust debate and exacting standards when it comes to new development have made the city what it is today. “I don’t think Boulder got to be as great a place as it is by saying yes to everything,” she said.
While Boulder has had its well-publicized battles with Walmart over the retailer’s repeated efforts to locate in the city, its fight in 1980 against Systems Development Corp. is most emblematic of how far Boulder will go to control growth.
The issues around the California software company’s plans to build a 4,000-employee headquarters on 475 acres along Colorado 93 just north of the Jefferson County line were similar to ones voiced last month over the Google campus.
In that case, the City Council, at the urging of the county commissioners, scuttled SDC’s plans by condemning the site and dedicating it as open space.
But Boulder Economic Vitality coordinator Liz Hanson said outright denials of projects similar to that are rare. She said she can’t remember the City Council turning down a proposal in her nearly 30 years working for the city.
In fact, she said, Boulder started an economic vitality program in 2006 to keep companies in town. The program has approved nearly $2.7 million in use and sales tax rebates, or permit fee rebates, to more than 50 companies in the past eight years.
Ninety-thousand dollars was rebated to Avery Brewing Company in 2013 when the beer maker announced plans to expand in the city, she said.
“It’s targeted at companies that are making investments here,” Hanson said.
But she’s not surprised by the interest a project the size of Google’s spurred in Boulder. And she doesn’t think it’s a bad thing.
“Boulder cares about Boulder,” Hanson said. “With any big change, it’s appropriate to have that discussion. It means we care about our community.”
John Aguilar: 303-954-1695, jaguilar@denverpost.com or twitter.com/abuvthefold
