Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs yesterday presented his proposal for a new, additional Apple Campus to the Cupertino City Council.
The presentation lasted around 21 minutes and includes Jobs reminiscing about his call to Bill Hewlett, asking for spare parts for a frequency counter, and how he got a summer job at Hewlett-Packard to build frequency counters. Now Apple has recently bought about 150 acres, including some from HP.
The design for the new Apple campus puts 12,000 employees in one building! “It’s a little like a spaceship landed,” said Jobs. It’s a giant 4-story ring; curved all the way around with not a straight piece of glass in the place. Jobs said that Apple’s experience building extreme glass for retail stores contributed to the campus’ design know-how.
When asked by a council member what benefits to Cupertino the new Apple campus would bring, Jobs reminded the council that Apple is the number one taxpayer in Cupertino and the company also brings many highly-educated and affluent people to the community, plus far less asphalt and more trees. When asked specially and somewhat jokingly if Apple would provide the Cupertino area with “free WiFi, or something like that” Jobs replied to much laughter, “Well, see, I’m a simpleton. I’ve always had this view that we pay taxes and the city should do those things. That’s why we pay taxes. Now, if we can get out of paying taxes, I’d be glad to put up a WiFi network… I think we bring a lot more than free WiFi.”
Cupertino Mayor Gilbert Wong, brandishing his iPad 2 “Which I love,” told Jobs that “We would love to have an Apple Store here in Cupertino.” Jobs replied, “Yeah, the problem with putting an Apple Store in Cupertino is there just isn’t the traffic… If we thought it would be successful, we’d love to.”
The site will go from approximately 3,700 trees to around 6,000. The employee count increases by 40%, space will increase by 20%, landscaping by 350%, the aforementioned trees by 60%, and the surface parking (asphalt) decreases by 90%.
Apple plans to generate their own power via natural gas and other means that will be cleaner than using the electrical grid. They will use the grid as a backup, not as the primary power source.
Jobs, without turning on his RDF, told the council flat out: “I think we have a shot at building the best office building in the world. I really do think architecture students will come here to see this. I think it could be that good.”
Jobs wants to submit detailed plans to the council “fairly quickly,” “break ground next year,” and “move in in 2015.”
Jobs gives the Cupertino City Council a keynote presentation –– or as the Cupertino City Council tags it, a “Presentation: Presentation” (sigh) –– about Apple’s proposed campus and amazing supercollider headquarters!
The following presentation was recorded Tuesday, June 7, 2011 at the Cupertino Community Hall:
MacDailyNews Take: Amazing building and Jobs’ personal presentation to the town council yesterday shouldn’t hurt Apple’s stock price any, either.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Cupertino Anonymous” for the heads up.]
