Tech giants open new campuses to attract talent

Real estate becomes a status symbol for Silicon Valley firms.

SA N F RA N C I SCO — N e x t month, Apple will inaugurate its circular “spaceship” c ampus, an eye- c atching Cupertino, Calif., landmark that will house some 12,000 employees of the world’s most v a l u a b l e c o mpany under a single roof.

About 10 miles away in Mountain View, Google is moving past the planning stage for a futuristic campus that, when open in 2019, will be the first major real estate projec t the search engine giant has built from scratch. The central building, which resembles a puffy white cloud, will be along a bicycle and pedestrian path that connects Google’s other offices.

Though different in size, design and public accessibility, the two campuses point toward a single idea: Real estate is becoming a status symbol for Silicon Valley companies, which are now competing in part on the glamour value of their work spaces. As they vie for soft- ware engineers, Apple and Google are trying to woo potential hires with design and lifestyle flourishes, down to small details such as temperature controls at the desk level at Google’s new campus and an interior meadow, pond and orchard just for Apple employees.

“They’re constantly locked in an arms race for talent,” said Jonathan Hill, dean of the Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems at New York’s Pace University. “The best engineers want to work in not only the nicest facilities, but they want to work in a place that is eco-friendly and is accessible to the community, so there aren’t any walls up between the tech community and the local folks.”

Both campuses bill themselves as environmentally conscious, with rooftop solar panels, walking paths and planned green-building certification. John Igoe, Google’s director of real estate, said the company even created an advisory group of engineers from different parts of the company to discuss what would make the work environment better.

Apple’s new campus will have an office for CEO Tim Cook and allow the company to consolidate thousands of employees who have been scattered in offices around Santa Clara County. Besides the 12,000 in the main building, new offices elsewhere on the grounds will be able to hold a few thousand more. G o o g l e ’s p l a n n e d c a mpus, which received a key go-ahead from the Mountain View City Council earlier this month, will be much smaller — holding up to 2,700 people. It’s unclear whether it will hold the CEO’s office.

Apple’s 2.8 million-squarefoot building looks “a little like a spaceship landed,” in the words of the company’s late co-founder, Steve Jobs. It has been highly anticipated by Apple’s fans, who pore over aerial drone photos looking for every detail. Famed British architect Norman Foster and his firm designed it in collaboration with Apple. Foster’s work includes the renovated Reichstag in Berlin and London’s City Hall.

Not everyone has been wowed. “Like every thing Foster does, it will be sleek and impeccably detailed, but who wants to work in a gigantic donut?” architecture critic Paul Goldberger wrote in the New Yorker in 2011, after renderings began to circulate.

A hallmark Apple trait is secrecy — the iPhone and other products remain under wraps until a dramatic unveiling — and, mirroring that, the inner circle of the spaceship will remain closed to the public. Visitors can access a retail store, cafe and visitor center near the ring-shaped building, but it’s unlikely they will bump into CEO Cook.

Google is moving in a different direction: Its campus, named Charleston East, has more than 10,000 square feet of publicly accessible space inside its office building, even as it seeks to blend into its leafy neighborhood.

At its heart is a proposed 595,000-square-foot, t wos tor y of f i c e with a gently curved, solar-paneled roof that is layered, like a giant tent canopy atop a grassy field. Unlike many Silicon Valley companies, Google will allow the members of the public to walk through the ground floor of the campus’ main building. They can dine at cafes and try out experiences such as virtual reality. There will also be a plaza where members of the public can listen to performances.

The design — attempting to blend the company with the world — is intended to represent openness, which Google views as a core value. The company believes its success reflects collaboration: For example, its cellphone operating system, Android, is shared with other phone manufacturers and has more users than any competitor.

“Charleston East reflects our DNA, and the Apple campus reflects their DNA,” said Igoe of Google. “We’re a very open type of concept.”

Facebook, too, has emphasized openness in its new construction — for employees. Years ago it hired architect Frank Gehry, who worked on Los Angeles’ Walt Disney Concert Hall and Spain’s Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, to design a more than 430,000-square-foot Menlo Park office building, topped with a 9-acre rooftop garden. The building opened in 2015. CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who works there, described it as the largest open-floor plan in the world.

The garden provides space for meetings and recreation, Lauren Swezey, Facebook’s sustainability and community outreach manager, said in January.

“You have a whole park within a few minutes’ reach of the employees,” Swezey said.

But as the new buildings open, t hey may re i g ni te concerns about the traffic that has resulted from rapid growth. Many employees will commute by shuttle, and others will carpool and bike as usual. Google has prioritized bike parking at Charleston East, and the campus will not increase the traffic in the area, Google said. Besides building the new campus, Google is planning to move 6,000 employees to Sunnyvale from Mountain View, partly to address concerns about traffic.

S t i l l , Mi r i a m Gl a z e r, a 63-year- old re sident of a mobi l e h o me p a r k n e a r Charleston East, said she’s concerned about both the potential traffic and the noise caused by construction.

Traffic “is horrible now,” Glazer said. “What’s it going to be like when they start all of that? Those are our biggest concerns.”

But other Mountain View residents, such as Bee Hanson, are looking forward to Charleston East.

“It’s going to be a nice place to take a walk,” Hanson said.