The 185,000-square-foot facility unveiled Thursday is big enough for 385 engineers – and company officials say it’s just the start of Google’s plans for expansion in Waterloo Region.

By the end of the year, the tech giant expects the second and third phases of its move to Breithaupt Street to be complete.

While the first phase of the move involved repurposing a former industrial plant, the second and third see the company building a brand new structure on the site.

“If we do things well, we’ll be able to fill that space as well,” said Steven Woods, Google Canada’s senior engineering director.

When all is said and done, Google expects to have 900 people working in Waterloo Region – far more than the 20 or so it employed locally when Woods first joined those ranks in 2008.

The new building includes a number of features which may seem out of place in a traditional office environment, and may even have other local tech firms eyeing them with a bit of jealousy – features like a full gym including a climbing wall, a games room stocked with multiple pinball tables, and a maker space.

“At the end of the day, the building’s all about making happy, productive engineers,” Woods said.

Sam Sebastian, Google Canada’s managing director, said that the company is “very bullish” on continuing to grow its local operation.

“Between the thriving schools and the startup economy, there are few places that Google would rather be today than right here,” he said.

Google’s local team has already played a big role in the development of Gmail, as well as products like Google Fiber and the OnHub router.

Thursday’s festivities were attended by a number of dignitaries, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau getting a chance to address the crowd.

“As we invest in manufacturing and innovation … we know that there is a bright future to Canada,” the prime minister said.

Trudeau also spoke about his own experience with coding – he said he became “halfway decent” with the C++ language during his time studying engineering – and the need to get more people involved in it.

“We need to do a lot better job at getting people to understand what coding is and why it’s important,” he said.

Before moving to Breithaupt, Google had been operating locally out of space in the Tannery on Charles Street.

That space will now be taken over by an assortment of startups, Woods said.