Google to buy Chelsea Market building for $2b

Google has agreed to pay more than $2 billion for New York City’s Chelsea Market building at 75 Ninth Ave. between 15th and 16th streets, according to The Real Deal. It’s located right across the street from the company’s NYC headquarters.

The seller is Jamestown, which bought out its partners in the property for $225 million in 2011, valuing the asset at $800 million.

The deal is the first billion-dollar-plus trade to go under contract this year in New York, reported The Real Deal.

The 1.2 million-square-foot Chelsea Market building is a food hall on the first floor, while office space takes up the upper levels. Tenants include Food Network, Major League Baseball, Google, and other broadcasting companies. Its first-floor food hall attracts about 6 million visitors every year, according to its website.

In New York City, Google owns the property located at 111 Eighth Ave., for which it paid $1.77 billion in 2010, and expanded its presence at 85 10th Ave., a former Nabisco cookie factory by the High Line, owned by Vornado Realty Trust and the Related Cos. The deal gave Google a presence in a three-block expanse in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood between Eighth Avenue and the West Side Highway and 15th and 16th streets, according to The Wall Street Journal.