City fears home price rise as Google plans campus

New York

THE locals say they don't like the tech folks pouring into town to work at places such as Google. They're insular. They're driving up housing prices. And they fear those newcomers are more like invaders than people trying to fit into their new community. For once, this is not about San Francisco.

In Boulder, Colorado, Google is running into problems that would be quite familiar to people in the Bay Area. Over the past month, as the City Council approved a plan to let Google build a four-acre (1.6 hectare) campus where the company would have the space to quintuple its local workforce to about 1,500 people, there has been a spirited debate about Google's potential effect on local home prices and whether the company's country club-like campuses would pair with the city's desire to increase walking and pedestrian traffic.