New uses for old buildings

The Register out of the UK has an article by Cade Metz about the saving of Hangar One at Moffett Field:

Hangar One, the onetime airship station that has long symbolized California's Silicon Valley, won't be destroyed after all. The US Navy will allow it to stand - without its clothing.
More than two years ago, the Navy designated Hangar One for demolition, after discovering that the mammoth Mountain View landmark was poisoning nearby wetlands. But some feisty blimp garage lovers fought to save the structure, and yesterday, as reported by the San Jose Mercury News, the Navy said it will leave the hangar's steel skeleton in place while removing its toxic siding.
Measuring 1,133-feet long by 308-feet wide by 198-feet high, Hangar One is the centerpiece of Moffett Field, a naval air base built in the early 1930s. The hangar originally housed the USS Macon, a 785-foot-long dirigible. The blimps floated in during the Second World War.
The base was closed in 1994 and handed to NASA. Now it's used as a private airstrip by the founders of Google, who fly their personal Boeing jet off its long runway. Through a private holding company called H211, Google execs are paying the organization "between $1.3m and $2.3m" a year to park as many as four jets at Moffett, including "two or three" Gulfstream Vs.

Rico says having seen that hangar every day for decades of his life (living in Palo Alto, just up the road), it's good to know it's not going away...

Google has clinched a $146m lease with NASA's research park in Mountain View, California to develop a 42-acre technology campus on the space agency's land.
NASA said today that Google will use the leased acreage to construct up to 1.2 million square feet of offices and research and development facilities at the Ames Research Center. It will pay $3.66m annually for 40 years, after which additional 10-year terms can be negotiated. Altogether, Google may rent the land for 90 years.
"This long-term lease agreement is a key component of Google's strategy for continued growth in Silicon Valley," said David Radcliffe, Google real estate veep, in a statement.
Construction of the NASoogle campus will proceed in three phases. Groundbreaking is scheduled to begin by the end of September 2013. The second phase will start by 2018, and the third by 2022. Most of the development will be office and R&D space in a campus-style setting. But this is Google, so there will also be company housing, parking facilities, and fine amenities such as dining, sports, fitness, and child care too.