Google is growing in Chicago, and it just opened its second office in the Fulton Market neighborhood to keep pace with its expanding local headcount.
Google officially unveiled its new Chicago office Thursday, located at 210 N. Carpenter St.---just south of its main office building it opened in 2015. The new, 132,000-square-foot space will be home to Google's growing Cloud team in Chicago.
Google first opened an office in Chicago in 2000, which housed a small sales team. It moved into its Fulton Market office in 2015, a 372,000-square-foot space at 320 N. Morgan St. that had 600 employees when the building opened.
Now four years later, Google has roughly doubled its Chicago headcount as it approaches 1,200 employees---and those workers are doing more than just sales. Along with advertising, its Chicago workforce includes product, engineering, technical infrastructure and finance roles. In February, as part of a $13 billion nationwide expansion, Google announced it was launching a finance team and planned to add hundreds of new employees in Chicago.
"Google's decision to open a second office in the city comes after they already doubled their local workforce over the last five years, proving why Chicago's unparalleled access to talent and human capital has led to one of the fastest-growing tech sectors in the country," Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said in a statement.
Google also said Thursday that it will partner with Chicago's Neighborhood Business Development Centers to provide digital skills training and free tools and resources to small businesses in neighborhoods across the city.
Bay Area tech office expansions have been a big part of Chicago's tech growth in recent years. Aside from Google, Salesforce, Facebook and Uber have all made significant expansion plans in the Windy City. Since 2013, Bay Area-based companies have leased 2 million square feet of office space in Chicago, according to CBRE.
