Google Fiber sets up office digs in downtown Omaha as it builds a high-speed internet network

OMAHA — While Nebraskans might be more accustomed to seeing the Google brand sprawled on suburban data centers, a Google subsidiary is now carving out a home in an office building in Omaha’s urban core.

Google Fiber, a new-to-market high-speed fiber optic internet provider, has leased about 7,000 square feet in the rehabbed Ashton building of the Millwork Commons district.

“While it’s been fantastic to see them commit to their data centers, we love seeing Google in office space in the Millwork neighborhood,” said Ryan Ellis, CEO of PJ Morgan Real Estate, which represented the landlord in the deal.

The lease marks Google Fiber’s entry into the Omaha area, which is seeing a rising number of new and competing broadband internet service providers hoping to win over customers. Sometimes called GFiber, Google Fiber in late March held a kickoff event in central Omaha to sign up its first residential customers.

A spokeswoman said the company will continue to add neighborhoods to its network in the Omaha area. She said it has started to lay down fiber optic to connect households in Bellevue and Council Bluffs.

Ellis said the Millwork Commons neighborhood, with its more than 70 businesses and nonprofit organizations, sees Google Fiber as a great fit to the still-developing creative district. Led by developer Black Dog Management, the neighborhood sprouted on about 50 acres of forgotten industrial property north of downtown, near popular entertainment attractions such as the home baseball diamond of the College World Series.

The neighborhood, which includes apartments, was designed as a place for entrepreneurs, techies and innovators.

With Google, the nearly 200,000-square-foot Ashton building will be 85% full, Ellis said Tuesday. 

A Google Fiber spokesman declined to provide the number of workers that will be based at its second-floor space. But she said the team there would support Google Fiber’s growing presence in the metro area.

As for data centers, tech giant Google broke ground on its first Nebraska data center in Papillion in 2019, and has since expanded at that campus. It built another data center in northwest Omaha, has one planned in Lincoln and recently expanded its data center in Council Bluffs.