Apple Breaks Ground on $1B Austin Campus

Apple’s new Austin campus. Image courtesy of Apple

Apple has broken ground on a $1 billion, 33-acre office campus in northern Austin, Texas, as the consumer electronics giant continues to grow its real estate footprint across the U.S. The project, first announced in December of last year, will expand Apple’s current presence in the city, where the company has begun assembly of the new Mac Pro computer at a plant nearby the site.

The 3 million-square-foot project will house a variety of functions including engineering, R&D, operations, finance, sales and customer support. Slated to open in 2022, the campus will initially accommodate 5,000 employees, with room to grow to 15,000.

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Sixty percent of the development will be covered by landscaping, including a 50-acre nature and wildlife preserve open to the public, and workspaces will run on 100 percent renewable energy. The site is located at the corner of Dallas Drive and West Parmer Lane, roughly one mile north of Apple’s existing office campus at 5501 W. Parmer Lane.

Made in America

Tim Cook, CEO, Apple. Image courtesy of Austin Community College via Flickr

News of the groundbreaking comes on the same day that President Trump is scheduled to tour the Mac Pro plant with Apple CEO Tim Cook. Apple announced in September that it would build the new generation of its Mac Pro series in Austin, after the company received federal waivers to import some components without paying tariffs. The $200 million, 244,000-square-foot facility cranks out each high-end computer along a 1,000-foot production line.

California-based Apple’s operations in Austin have grown by more than half in the past five years to a current workforce of 7,000. The company is also expanding in Boulder, Colo., Culver City, Calif., Pittsburgh, San Diego, Seattle and New York City, where it is said to be seeking a new office in Manhattan with up to 500,000 square feet of space, The Real Deal has reported.

Apple topped out on a 128,000-square-foot headquarters building for its content division in Culver City this past June. The company recently leased a second building in San Diego, the 204,000-square-foot APEX project developed by BioMed Realty. In Seattle, the purveyor of iPhones is expanding into a 635,000-square-foot campus across two 12-story towers developed by Kilroy Realty Corp.