Roger Fingas
Apple is working with the city of San Jose on a development agreement for a campus on the north side of town, which if authorized could be larger than Cupertino's Campus 2 at 4.15 million square feet, a report said on Wednesday.
A draft version of the agreement isn't yet finished, but should be presented to the city's Planning Commission sometime this month, said the Silicon Valley Business Journal. Under current terms development rights would be locked in for 15 years, and the campus would spread within 86 acres next to Orchard Parkway, Component Drive, and Guadalupe Parkway.
Apple has yet to submit an official development proposal, but if it exploits the full 4.15 million square feet, the campus would dwarf even its future "spaceship" headquarters in Cupertino.
Last month Apple signed a lease on a part of the acreage, owned by realty firm Steelwave. The company also owns neighboring real estate sold by Ellis Partners and Lowe Enterprises, the latter planned to offer at least 1.8 million square feet.
Apple's plans for the new office space are still unknown. One possibility is that Apple will need it to support its automotive ambitions, which include an electric car and possibly self-driving technology. The company is believed to be on a major hiring spree for the effort, which could see the first car roll off assembly lines in 2019 or 2020.
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13 Comments
Not good, doing almost all your hiring in one state. When some regulatory push comes along%u2014and there are a lot of those connected to auto making%u2014it helps to have members of Congress who see all those jobs in their district. Besides, if you're going to be making cars, the Southeastern U.S. is the place to be. It's where auto and aircraft manufacturing have migrated and where the most modern factories are. The cost of living and the regulatory climate make manufacturing in California too costly.
Not good, doing almost all your hiring in one state. When some regulatory push comes along%u2014and there are a lot of those connected to auto making%u2014it helps to have members of Congress who see all those jobs in their district.
Besides, if you're going to be making cars, the Southeastern U.S. is the place to be. It's where auto and aircraft manufacturing have migrated and where the most modern factories are. The cost of living and the regulatory climate make manufacturing in California too costly.
I agree, but I think it's unlikely they will be doing manufacturing at that site. The two buildings shown in the rendering in the AI article are almost fully built (I cycle past them on my way to work every day), and they are clearly office buildings.
I know Tesla are doing car manufacturing in the Bay Area, but I think that's more because they got a stellar deal on an already constructed auto factory. I can't see Apple building an auto factory from scratch in the Bay Area.
Looks like sprawl to me. Any decent transit available out there?
Looks like sprawl to me. Any decent transit available out there?
Not sure what you mean by "looks like sprawl", but there is transit. The Component VTA stop is easy walking distance to this site.
It's definitely not sprawl, it's just north of the airport. Guadalupe Parkway is also known as HW-87 (a 6 lane freeway), and that area is very close to 101 as well (8 lanes there). Beyond the HW-87 and US-101 interchange is San Jose International Airport.
That said, the area around 101 and 87 is a commute bottleneck now, so if you have a lot more workers going in there then they'd certainly need to look at tweaking the freeways.