Apple inks deal for Santa Clara offices, launches renovation

Efforts to expand its Bay Area operations have yet to slacken

SANTA CLARA >> Apple has planted a new outpost in Santa Clara, leasing a fourdecade-old industrial building where the tech titan has launched a wide-ranging renovation, public records show.

Cupertino-based Apple leased a 62,000-squarefoot building near the corner of Bowers and Walsh avenues, according to an official filing by the property owner with the Santa Clara County Recorder’s Office.

The deal suggests that Apple’s brisk efforts to expand its Bay Area operations have yet to slacken in a significant way.

“This really shows that Apple has decided that Silicon Valley is where they can find the best talent,” said Chad Leiker, a first vice president with Kidder Mathews, a commercial realty brokerage. “This is where they want to be.”

Apple’s biggest expansion effort in recent years was the iPhone maker’s move into a vast circular campus in Cupertino sometimes nicknamed the “spaceship campus” and also referred to more formally as AC2 and Apple Park. More than 12,000 people work in the new headquarters complex, an iconic, striking building that became a visitor attraction virtually from the day it opened.

In addition to this new campus, Apple has collected in recent years, through combinations of leases or property purchases, an array of sites for a growing corporate presence in Silicon Valley.

In Sunnyvale, Apple has leased a 777,000-squarefoot complex whose centerpiece is a curving building that looks a bit like a three-leaf clover. The site at Wolfe Road and Central Expressway is large enough to accommodate as many as 3,800 employees.

In north San Jose, Apple has assembled 86 acres worth of office space and vacant land that will accommodate the growing company as it expands in the next few years. When fully developed, the campus could contain 4.15 million square feet of offices. Several thousand could work at the San Jose complex.

Apple’s expansions outside of Cupertino first got on the radar screen in a big way in July 2015, when the company leased two big office buildings from legendary Bay Area developer Peery Arrillaga. The buildings totaled 318,000 square feet. Those offices could accommodate 1,600 employees.

In the most recent lease in Santa Clara of the building at 2845 Bowers and 2855 Bowers, it wasn’t clear when Apple might be moving in. But a check in the building this month showed that extensive construction was underway inside the offices.

“Apple appears to be very comfortable expanding in these local cities,” Leiker said. “They know what they can achieve here.”