BOULDER Google’s plans to build a 4-acre campus at the southwest corner of 30th and Pearl streets in Boulder has grabbed attention, but less talked about are the small businesses being forced out to make way for the tech giant.
“I’m a pawn in this great game,” said David Phillips, owner of David’s Professional Clock Repair in the Landmark Center shopping center. “I’m helpless to big business doing what they are going to do regardless of the small businesses being displaced.”
Phillips’ business, which was forced to move from a building across 30th Street just two years ago, is one of more than a dozen businesses at the site that are going to have to find new homes so that Google can put up three 100,000-square-foot office buildings.
Many businesses already have left.
Phillips, who has run his clock repair shop in Boulder for nearly a quarter century, said he received a letter a few months ago from his landlord, Pearl Place Associates, that it would not be renewing his lease in the new year.
He said he is supposed to be out of the space at 2111 30th St. by this weekend. He is moving to Diagonal Plaza in north Boulder.
Pearl Place Associates bought four buildings at the corner — Aspen Plaza, Landmark Center, the HB Woodsongs building and the D&K Printing building — in summer 2013 for $11.2 million.
Google will be leasing its campus rather than buying it.
Jackson Wood, owner of Karliquin’s Game Knight, said he relocated from Aspen Plaza to Gunbarrel this month. He said he was forced to find a new space much farther out from the center of town because of Boulder’s high rents.
“We knew we had to look outside of (central) Boulder or we’d have to go out of business,” Wood said.
