Google trades scattered D.C. offices for one near Union Station

Google has leased a large portion of the 231,000-square-foot office building at 500 N. Capitol St. NW, a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol, and plans to consolidate its D.C. offices there in phases over the next few years as the interior is built out, the Washington Business Journal reported.

Google has had a District presence since 2005, but after subleasing 130,000 square feet at 655 New York Ave. NW in 2022 and holding roughly 100,000 square feet at 25 Massachusetts Ave. NW, its two D.C. spaces now total about 230,000 square feet — nearly the size of the entire 231,000-square-foot building at 500 N. Capitol, though Google is taking a large portion rather than all of it. The lease is less a footprint expansion than a consolidation play: scattered offices replaced by one transit-anchored asset next to Union Station.

The ownership gives the lease extra grip: BXP owns 30% of the property, with Miami's Masaveu International holding the majority stake, and BXP acquired the 1966-vintage building in 2010. Landing a tenant of Google's scale is a direct endorsement of the asset — and of the split now running through office, where occupiers consolidate into modern, efficient, well-located buildings while the rest of the stock drifts toward conversions and vacancy-tolerant buyers.

The District around the Capitol already shows both sides of that trade. Last week, PWD reported that a 57-unit building of 297-square-foot efficiencies on Capitol Hill sold for roughly $316,000 a unit — a cash-flow bet on small units near Amazon and Google. That was a residential repricing; Google's lease is the office-side vote for the same neighborhood.

In Redwood City, the same tenant shuffle is running the other way: Revolution Medicines is nearing a 700,000-square-foot lease at a former Google campus, a pre-launch drug bet that would more than double the biotech's Redwood City footprint and reset the comp for vacant Peninsula tech space.

Google will keep operating from its current locations until the new office is ready, so the consolidation will play out over years — a deliberate concentration of space rather than a rushed decision. The buildings that can hold a company's entire local presence in one efficient box will win the next phase of office leasing; the rest will feed the conversion pipeline.