Google Buys Chelsea Market For $2.4 Billion

CHELSEA, NY — Google has bought the entire building that houses the Chelsea Market for $2.4 billion in a deal that closed on Tuesday.

Google Inc. bought the Chelsea building from the real estate company Jamestown, which announced the deal on Tuesday. The purchase comes with the right to make the building even larger by adding about eight stories, or 300,000 square feet, according to the New York Times. The deal is reportedly the city's second largest single-asset sale ever.

Chelsea Market, located at 75 Ninth Ave., houses a massive and well-known food hall and shopping center, along with offices and studio space for additional companies, including Major League Baseball and NY1 News. In total, the building spans 1,188,501 square feet and stretches a full block.

Before buying the building, Google already leased 400,000 square feet of space in Chelsea Market, and the tech giant's NYC headquarters are located across the street, at 111 Eighth Ave.

When news first broke that Google was considered buying Chelsea Market, real estate observers were unsure what the purchase could mean for the popular food hall, which attracts an estimated 500,000 visitors each month. On Tuesday, Jamestown said that it would continue management of the food and retail hall and that the Chelsea Market's future remained secure for the immediate future.

The companies have agreed to work together "to ensure a smooth transition with little or no impact to the community and tenants of the building," Jamestown said in a statement.

Image credit: Photo by Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images for NYCWFF. Image caption: An interior shot of Chelsea Market.