YouTube's expansion plans for its HQ reveal Google sees a booming future for video

Greg Sandoval/Business Insider

David Woltering, the community development director for the city of San Bruno, discusses plans to expand the area around YouTube's HQ.

• YouTube wants to dramatically expand the company's headquarters.
• The city of San Bruno, CA, recently presented four options for the public to consider.
• The plan favored by YouTube would call for a dramatic increase in the amount of office space and jobs located in the area.

SAN BRUNO, CA - More than 13 years and millions of uploads later, the tiny video startup that began life above a pizzeria is now too sprawling a business for even entire neighborhoods to hold.

YouTube's managers began to seek an expansion of its San Bruno, CA headquarters last year. On Tuesday evening, the city of San Bruno presented four separate development plans for the 98-acre area around YouTube's offices for public consideration. More than 50 people showed up at the San Bruno Senior Center to review the plans and offer input.

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According to city managers, YouTube favors a proposal that would add 2.3 million square feet of office space and bring more than 10,000 new jobs to the area. Not all those jobs or space would belong to Google but said "The vast majority of it would be YouTube's."

That YouTube is bursting out of its current office space should surprise no one. The world's No. 1 video-sharing service and the second most-visited site on the Web (Google is No.1) is supposedly raking in big ad dollars, according to analysts. In May, analysts from Morgan Stanley said they believe if YouTube were a standalone enterprise, it would be more valuable than General Electric, IBM, PepsiCo or Comcast.

The expansion plan for YouTube's headquarters is just the latest sign that YouTube continues to grow and parent company Google doesn't expect that growth to end any time soon.

Greg Sandoval/Business Insider

One of the proposals for development of the area around YouTube's HQ by the city of San Bruno.

To help make way for the expansion, YouTube spent more than $300 million to acquire a nearby office park and two separate buildings.

Currently, the area has 1.6 million square feet of office space, 145,000 square feet dedicated to retail, and no space allotted for the public or civic uses. Woltering said YouTube at the moment has control of 900,000 square feet.

YouTube favors a plan titled "Alternative 4, Greenway Connection," which calls for adding the most office space of any of the proposals, with 2.3 million square feet. Alternative 4 also includes adding 21,000 square feet for retail, 4.5 acres for public open space and nothing for civic uses. Underground parking would be built.

On the opposite extreme, Alternative 1 allows for the addition of 1.09 million square feet of office space, 9,000 square feet for retail, 6.2 acres for open space, and 1.7 acres for civic uses.

The expansion still has a lengthy review process ahead of it before a specific plan is adopted, but Woltering said he thinks that it could be completed before year's end. YouTube wants to break ground sometime next year, he said.

On Tuesday, members of the public, most of whom appeared to be well into their 60s, seemed most concerned about the need for additional parking and traffic mitigation. They complained that their streets were already clogged and adding 10,000 new workers sounded like a nightmare.

Greg Sandoval/Business Insider

Numbers related to San Bruno's four development proposals

Woltering said the workers would be added gradually in stages by YouTube and the other companies in the area over a 20-year-period.

That a reasonably important part of YouTube business was being settled in the auditorium of a suburban senior-citizen center seemed strange. The plastic seats, cookies, and gray hair juxtaposed in my head with some of YouTube's typical video fare. Cardi B and Markiplier would have seemed out of place here.

YouTube appeared to be popular among home and business owners in the area. Some of those who commented praised the company for being "a good neighbor."

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