AppleInsider Staff
Apple's seemingly insatiable appetite for Silicon Valley office space has reportedly led the company to acquire an undeveloped 43-acre site in San Jose, a deal worth $138 million that could add as much as 2.8 million square feet of space to Apple's inventory.
The San Jose site is located on North First Street, according to the Silicon Valley Business Journal, within shouting distance of fellow tech giants like Cisco and Samsung. Apple purchased the tract from real estate investment firm Lowe Enterprises, which had previously intended to develop the site into an "urban-style" campus with nearly 2 million square feet of office space.
San Jose planners have approved the building of up to 2.8 million square feet of office space on the site, and it remains unclear exactly what direction Apple intends to take. The latter figure would put Apple's potential new development on par with its spaceship campus in Cupertino when it comes to floor space.
Apple has been rumored to be mulling an expansion to San Jose for some time, given the city's proximity to Cupertino and the fact that a significant portion of Apple's workforce already lives in San Jose. Apple's new site is situated across from the 101 Tech development, where the company signed a lease for 300,000 square feet last month.
In addition to the office space, the Journal reports that "Apple has been in the market for broad swaths of heavy R&D and industrial space," suggesting that the company is working on a major expansion of its research and development operations that are thought to include a self-driving car. Apple's new spaceship campus will come with 600,000 square feet of dedicated R&D space.
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
Chip Loder
Malcolm Owen
32 Comments
[quote name="sog35" url="/t/187466/apple-pays-138-million-for-43-acre-building-plot-in-san-jose-tech-corridor#post_2756212"]C A R [/quote] That was my first thought when I saw the size would be on par with Campus 2 and would fit perfectly for a factory in many regards, just [U]please[/U] don't trick yourself into making your first thought into some absolute truth despite this only being a weak hypothesis.
Apple is gobbling up all this real estate but the stock is being priced at zero earnings growth. I'm in it for the long term but I think that's nuts.
Wouldn't they want to build a factory someplace in the midwest or the south where the workers' salaries are lower and also non-union. Tesla is the only automaker that is not in those southern and midwest states.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automotive_assembly_plants_in_the_United_States
[quote name="mstone" url="/t/187466/apple-pays-138-million-for-43-acre-building-plot-in-san-jose-tech-corridor#post_2756221"] Wouldn't they want to build a factory someplace in the midwest or the south where the workers' salaries are lower and also non-union. Tesla is the only automaker that is not in those southern and midwest states. [URL=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automotive_assembly_plants_in_the_United_States]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automotive_assembly_plants_in_the_United_States[/URL] [/quote] That thought did cross my mind, but then I thought of Tesla. as well as, the proximity to Cupertino, how a modern car may be more CE than anything else, and the potentially long number of years it may take to bring it to market. If it is for a car, it may not be so much for a car producing factory, so much as a car design, production, and indoor test facility in which they can control the privacy and environment as they test this for many years. The automobile was the first thing that came to mind but I'm open to other suggestions.
The thought that came to my mind is final assembly. The bodies may be assembled in heavy factories elsewhere and transported to a smaller facility, such as this, for installation of the electronics and controls.
Also, a very large number of the customers may be in California. Thus, the cars would end up being shipped there anyway.
Just thinking...