Apple plans $1B campus for Austin

Top tech company Apple plans to build $1 billion campus in Austin, NPR reported Thursday. According to the report, the 133-acre facility will be located in North Austin, less than a mile from its current local campus off Parmer at Riata Vista, just south of Jollyville.

The new campus will have space for up to 15,000 workers and will add 5,000 jobs in the immediate future. Apple expects the move to make it Austin’s largest private employer.

Apple currently employs 6,200 workers in Austin—more than in any other city apart from its Cupertino, California, headquarters. That number will increase substantially with completion of the new Austin headquarters.

The company signed a 10-year economic development contract in Texas six years ago, with Austin at the front of the line for expansion, as member local NPR station KUT reported at the time. That deal included a 100 percent property tax rebate and other incentives as well as requiring Apple to invest more than $300 million to build a new campus, according to the 2012 KUT story.

Apple’s announcement comes in the wake of the news that Austin would not be the site of the much ballyhooed second Amazon headquarters, for which it was on the short list. While Austin lost its bid for that internet behemoth—which will be located in Washington, D.C., and Long Island City, New York—the Apple campus is likely to have some similar effects on the city’s housing costs and transportation systems, though to a smaller extent.

Apple’s announcement included the information that jobs at the facility would run a gamut from engineering and research to business operations, sales, and customer support. While the company also announced its intention to include “50 acres of preserved open space” on the campus and that workspaces will be powered by 100 percent renewable energy, its Cupertino headquarters’s large swaths of parking space aren’t encouraging when it comes to the sustainability of the future Austin expansion overall.

The company also announced plans for new facilities in Seattle, San Diego, and Culver City and further U.S. expansion to cities including Pittsburgh, New York, and Boulder, Colorado, in the next three years.

• Apple Will Build $1 Billion Campus in Austin, Adding 5,000 Jobs [NPR]

• The Fine Print on Austin’s $8.6 Million Deal with Apple [KUT]