Earlier this week we told you that the Cupertino City Council had voted unanimously to approve Apple’s planning application for its new spaceship campus with a final vote expected next month on November 15th. Today the City of Cupertino posted the video above of a press conference held to announce the Apple Campus 2 approval. The press conference was held yesterday and attended by Cupertino Mayor Orrin Mahoney and Apple’s Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer.
Apple is expected to break ground and begin construction of the new campus later this month and begin moving in employees by 2016.
Yesterday, we saw Apple’s models for the new Campus 2 project. Today, Cupertino released this video of the council meeting where Apple presented. The Campus 2 video Apple produced looks like an Apple product video. I really like it, especially the Steve Jobs bits.
New photos from the San Jose Mercury News today reveal additional details about Apple’s new campus, slated to be completed sometime in either 2015 or 2016. A scale model of the planned building was shown to The Mercury News by Apple’s CFO, Peter Oppenheimer, located at an office on the 175-acre site of Apple’s planned campus. According to Oppenheimer:
Update, July 2: The City of Cupertino just posted the recording of last week’s meeting (above).
Earlier this month Apple published a report detailing its economic impact on Cupertino from the construction of its brand new ‘Campus 2’, aka ‘Spaceship’ campus. Tomorrow, the public in and around Cupertino will get their chance to weigh in on Apple’s impact on the surrounding area with a public comment period. The City of Cupertino will be live streaming the event and is also allowing the public to submit comments through www.cupertino.org/applecomments.
Many of the comments submitted congratulate Apple on its new project, but others are concerned about the removal of trees and other environmental issues:
We are concerned about the fate of the trees in and around the new Apple Campus. A couple of months ago, we met a man who claimed he was an arborist hired by Apple and that he planned to chop down 6000 trees on the Campus and around the streets with replacements of new trees. We don’t know it has been confirmed by the Apple Campus 2 or not.
These trees have been living in our neighborhood for more than 40 years(?) – when we moved into this area in 1989, they were already quite big. And we enjoy so much of these beautiful trees – they give us shade in summer and they make our streets much enjoyable while walking along. Especially they improve our environment and give us clean air. Please let these trees happily live in our neighborhood with us and our children and children’s children. Many thanks
Apple has just revised its plans for its massive upcoming new headquarters, scheduled to be completed by 2016. The revised plans, known as Submittal 6, focus less on the structure of the building itself, instead highlighting the surrounding land and facilities, showing off new bike paths, larger parking areas, and photos of street renderings.
The parking areas have been increased in capacity from 9,000 to 9,240 in the main lot, and 1,500 to 1,740 in an additional location, the report states. Updated bike access plans include new features such as enhanced bike lanes called “buffered bike lanes,” as well as bike boxes and two-stage turn boxes (images below).
Although there will be an incremental increase in gross office and research and development floor area of approximately 20%, the efficient use of the main site will result in almost tripling the landscaped area. Underground and structured parking will replace 9,220 surface parking spaces – creating almost three times more open space.
A render by Foster + Partners of Apple’s soon to be constructed Spaceship campus
Following a report earlier this month that Apple’s Spaceship campus project had increased to nearly $5B as lead architect Foster + Partners attempted to trim around a billion from the budget, a new report today claims Apple is now working with the architecture company on other projects. Marketingmagazine claims “sources close to the project” say Foster will soon be assisting Apple with the design of its retail stores: Expand Expanding Close
We already knew there would be delays for Apple’s 2.8-million square foot Campus 2 following reports in November. Apple originally planned to move around 12,000 employees into the currently under construction spaceship-like campus by 2015, but in November warned completion of construction would likely be delayed until mid-2016. Today we get some more insider info on the project in a report from Bloomberg Businessweek, claiming the project is now over budget and possibly delayed even further:
Since 2011, the budget for Apple’s Campus 2 has ballooned from less than $3 billion to nearly $5 billion, according to five people close to the project who were not authorized to speak on the record. If their consensus estimate is accurate, Apple’s expansion would eclipse the $3.9 billion being spent on the new World Trade Center complex in New York, and the new office space would run more than $1,500 per square foot—three times the cost of many top-of-the-line downtown corporate towers.
Apple has yet to actually break ground on the site, but Bloomberg’s sources said Apple has plans to start demolition of 26 buildings that are currently on the land. According to the report, the delays are due to extra time spent attempting to cut around $1 billion from the budget. Apple has also yet to complete deals with contractors: Expand Expanding Close
Following this morning’s report that Apple’s grand spaceship campus introduced by Steve Jobs in 2011 won’t open until mid-2016, Apple has sent its revised plans to the city of Cupertino this afternoon. The 176-acre campus was originally slated to complete in 2015 after the company was set to start work this year; however, the City of Cupertino still needs to complete an environmental review. Apple notified Cupertino of the time-frame change in the updated project proposal and added, “This schedule may be modified to meet Apple’s business needs.”
Reliable sources recently provided 9to5Mac with official blueprints of Apple Campus 2 that detail and illustrate the mammoth project currently in development. (These are just a few of the confidential images.)
Solar panels cover the main building’s entire roof, and the images above depict additional outdoor and indoor aspects of the new structure. The exclusive slides named Foster + Partners as one of the architecture firms working on the project, and they cited Arup for consulting engineering, OLIN for landscape architecture, and Davis Langdon for construction. Previous reports indicated that construction is supposed to start later this year.
In related news: Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer sent neighbors brochures recently to solicit feedback on the project.