Google pays $1b for London development

Google has bought the Renzo Piano’s 11-story Central Saint Giles development, located near Oxford Street in London, for $1 billion. The sellers were Legal & General Group and Mitsubishi Estate.

“Our investment in this striking Renzo Piano-designed development represents our continued confidence in the office as a place for in-person collaboration and connection,” said Ronan Harris, vice president and managing director of Google United Kingdom and Ireland, in a blogpost.

The building, which has a distinctive red, green, orange and yellow façade, includes 408,000 square feet of office space, and more than 100 residential apartments, with restaurants and cafes on the ground floor. The tech giant now rents about 40 percent of the building.

“Over the next few years, we’ll be embarking on a multimillion-pound refurbishment of our offices within Cent