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Cupertino Approves New Apple Spaceship HQ
mrspoonsi writes with news that Apple's plan to raze the old HP headquarters and replace it with some kind of space ship is moving forward. From the article: "A little over two years since Steve Jobs presented his case for it and after the occasional setback, the Cupertino City Council has finally given Apple full approval to go ahead with its futuristic campus. In exchange, Apple has agreed to fork over more money to the city in the form of a reduced sales tax rebate — going forward, Cupertino will only give back 35 percent sales tax instead of the 50 percent it had previously. Indeed, as soon as Apple gets its final permits some time today, it can begin demolishing the former HP headquarters and start building its own."
"Under the new agreement, that rebate has been reduced to 35 percent, which based on 2012 tax revenues would mean the residents of Cupertino will pay Apple -- which recorded net sales of $156.5 billion during the last fiscal year, and has a cash hoard estimated at $100 billion -- only $4.4 million to stick around. It would have been $6.2 million under the old agreement. That's an extra $1.8 million for Cupertino, a city with only $51.4 million in projected general fund revenues this year, according to figures reported in the Los Angeles Times."
Really Apple Cupertino gave you a tax break when things where not going well for you. Now you are doing well you are still getting a 4.4 million dollar kickback! Come one and just pay your taxes. You would increase the general fund by around 8%.
AKA just do the right thing.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Hoping that they will finally fly away?
So they're building a futuristic structure, employing people in the area, and taking over a building that wasn't being used- and they're bribing the city council to do this with the sales tax thing?
Fuck, someone with business sense could have them upping the rebates. Apple is getting too fat and lazy for it's own good.
Is it really worth it?
Here's a presentation by Steve Jobs from a couple years ago showing the initial plans for the spaceship campus. According to the video title it's apparently the last recorded Jobs video footage. Good luck to Apple finishing the building during the following years, it's certainly a cool plan.
Sign that a company is jumping or is about to jump the shark: Build a huge lavish HQ.
Although, Google didn't mind when SGI did it.. they got a great deal on the real estate.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
It is the pentagon, but thinner and with rounded corners.
apple a day sort of stuff during the hard times anyway
Does that mean they'll be leaving earth sometime soon?
Actually, my first impression of the architecture was a 1970s-style multi-platter removable disk pack. How trendy is that?
They are building a space ship so they can "fly away" if the city doesn't cooperate. Read the bloody article!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
The world is fucking turning to shit The earth don't stand a chance Hurricane typhoon will destroy the city We've got to clean up the skies and recycle We've got to stop the overpopulation But most important of all We've got to build a Death Star Tenacious D predicted this!
Looks like the MindHead world headquarters.
Shouldn't they all already have put on their purple Nikes and drank their poisoned Kool-Aid and burned the place down when their Master ascended?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Here in the UK we cut out the middleman, and just buy these flying saucer tech headquarters directly from taxpayers' money:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Communications_Headquarters
Then they spy on us.
in a giant TRON identity disk?
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Once built it will lift off and roam the Earth, hovering over the oceans, able to evade all tax laws.
Might they move a few hundred meters across city lines to save $4 million X 20 years = $80 million. Yes!
This is very visible where I live, in Bryan / College Station, Texas. A large portion of both cities is within a mile of the border between them. Driving through the area, it's obvious which city has traditionally been friendly to businesses and which hasn't. The College Station side has new towers being built a couple hundred feet from the empty, decaying buildings in Bryan. A few years ago Bryan figured it out and is now attracting new investment. The downtown Bryan area has switched from hookers and gangs to restaurants and boutiques, but most of the city is still suffering from the fact that businesses preferred College Station for so many years.
The actual design of the building is beautiful and marvelous.
But I have to say that the entire design of the campus is a little disappointing. The buildings on campus are completely isolated from the rest of the city of Cupertino. The campus will be separated by a new security wall/fence surrounding the perimeter that will prevent all unauthorized entry, and most of the buildings will be hidden behind substantial landscaping. The plan also demolishes a city street that will disturb local automotive and bicycle routes.
Apple workers will get to appreciate the beauty of the architecture, and the calmness of the natural park-like setting, but the public will have to gaze from a distance.
I think Apple had a chance here to integrate the campus more closely with the city, and the city had an opportunity to ask for more of a community feeling than an ivory tower feeling. What if the park-like portions of the campus were an actual public park? The public could appreciate the architectural wonder and feel that the campus was at least a little bit a part of their city. What if the campus had more walking-friendly routes to and from the rest of the city, to encourage interaction between workers and local businesses? Facebook did this, by basically buying a little mini-city (http://mediagallery.usatoday.com/Inside+Facebook%27s+headquarters/G3949) which integrates work and life elements. You'd get a better city, quite frankly.
It was an HP campus, but it wasn't HP headquarters, which is in Palo Alto.
...will be really bad? Other day southbound 280 in Cupertino area had couple accidents so I took Homestead and it was worse. I imagine Stevens Creek was terrible as well. I heard Apple has 10,000 employees scattered about in numerous buildings throughout Cupertino but here they will be gathered in one location. Agg, traffic in that area may be so bad cars will not work, faster to walk.
But then I remember back in 20th century when HP was ran by Bill and Dave, and those buildings slated for the chute had the best engineers ever working in them. Test equipment that was premium, much of that stuff from back then still sells high value even when it is all beat up with 20 year old cal stickers.
mfwright@batnet.com
If the building comes out as expected, it will be a landmark like the Empire State Building (or the (collapsed) World Trade Center (before it collapsed)).
Yes, it could all be had cheaper - but OTOH, it's still better than paying out huge bonuses to the execs or buying more corporate jets. There are a thousand ways to waste money. This way, at least the public gets something in return.
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
what's the rationale behind giving them benefits? would they move away if they didn't? unlikely, really.
Actually it would be relatively easy for Apple to relocate. They don't have to go across the country though they probably could if needed. They could just go to the next town over. The rationale is that some tax revenue is better than no tax revenue. Furthermore there is additional tax and income benefit to other local businesses like restaurants, hotels, etc.
Exactly. Where else in the USA could they possibly find a lower cost of living?
Not really a big consideration. As long as the employees can get to work the company doesn't really need to care much. The company gets tax benefits because if Apple moves out of Cupertino (which they easily could do) then Cupertino gets zero tax revenue and might even lose additional spillover revenues from restaurants, hotels, etc. Last time I checked some revenue is better than no revenue.
Why is this news for geeks? Is there something technically advanced in their new building? Why should we care? Or is the word "Apple" enough to warrant front page on Slashdot?
One of Parkinson's Laws is that the demise of a corporation follows not long after construction of headquarters.
It's called having an edifice complex.
Did anyone catch the fact that Apple is truncating Pruneridge Avenue for this? Traffic around that site is going to be a mess...
iCentrifuge
What astonishes me is that they have all this cash and they don't seem to be inventing anything new or creating any new markets. That's the bigger sign of distress at the company.
No new markets? For crying out loud the iPad was released just 3 years ago. That for all practical purposes created the tablet market as we know it today. It's absurd that anyone should really expect Apple to create completely new multi-billion dollar businesses from scratch every year or they are somehow in danger of going out of business. I'm pretty sure you have no idea how difficult it is to productively invest a cash hoard the size of the one Apple has. It's virtually impossible.
When you get to the size of Apple or Google or Microsoft there simply aren't that many investments you can make that will move the needle. Apple made something like $156 billion in revenue in 2012. Apple's trailing twelve month growth rate is 9.2% which is effectively the same thing as creating a $14 billion company from scratch. FYI a company with $14 billion in revenue would be in the top 200 companies in the Fortune 500. That means Apple *grew* by the entire size of eBay last year. How easy do you think that is to do? What business do you think Apple should do that is going to generate $14 billion in the next year?
I give up - real post or parody? Oh, what's the difference, we statists love stealing and make no bones about it.
I think the city isn't getting hurt at all (per poster above). It could be much worse: Chicago gave 42 Million in tax breaks to Boeing to move its corporate head quarters. What did they get for that? About 200 employees working downtown (on Upper Wacker IIRC). Maybe bragging rights is worth it but I think I'd rather have the manufacturing headquarters with 1000's of jobs (I think Libertyville has plenty of nice manufacturing space since Motorola abandoned it for China).
Am I the only one picturing their spacehip like this?
while
"Apple has agreed to fork over more money to the city in the form of a reduced sales tax rebate"
This is the sound of America becoming a third world country.
We call a business complex a "campus", and we call a school a "plant".
That, in a nutshell, is what's wrong with the country.
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Many corporations who built a big new headquarters were gone within 5 years. Let's hope at that this does not happen to Apple.
-- Cheers!