No more fighting for a corner office at Apple. Or so goes the quip going around the Cupertino, Calif.-based Mac maker these days. No need to worry about going hungry, either -- at least if you like apricots.
The City of Cupertino published more details on Apple’s enormous circular headquarters Tuesday. And if you’re looking for ‘one last thing,’ that final, wonderful bit of showmanship that Apple Chief Steve Jobs was known for, the plans reveal it: trees.
White blossoming cherry trees will be scattered throughout the campus, along walkways, at the edges of open glades, and throughout the main buildings enormous circular courtyard. Visitors arriving for new product introductions will wander down a path lined with banks of cherry trees -- a sight that, come April in California -- should be breathtaking.
Hidden from public view inside Apple’s building: more fruit trees. Apple employees will enjoy gardens, a fountain, an open-air amphitheater, and a dining terrace nestled among Apple orchards, a grove of apricot trees, and stands of plum trees. Cherry trees, again, will be sprinkled throughout. If you’re an aborist, you might want to submit your employment application now.
While Apple’s new campus is still moving through the city planning process, there’s no almost no chance it won’t be built. Apple has $81.57 billion in cash and short-term securities: far more money than it will need to build the thing. Jobs personally pitched Cupertino’s city council on the project in August, two months before his death from pancreatic cancer. “There is no chance we are saying no,” Cupertino Mayor Gilbert Wong said last September.
Nevertheless, city planners are obliged to take a close look at the project -- giving the public a good look at Apple’s plans. It’s a plan that allows Apple to carefully control who sees what, and who goes where.
Apple will be able to invite the press to a corporate auditorium that stands apart from the rest of its campus, complete with a parking area separated from the ones used by its employees. The largely underground auditorium can be reach from Apple's main building through an underground tunnel.
Employees will enjoy the use of a 45,000 square foot fitness center, on campus dining, and access to 8,900 above ground and underground parking spots.
Only a few, presumably, will have access to Apple’s 300,000 square foot ‘research facilities.’ Located in a separate building on the edge of Apple’s campus, it’s still unclear whether the buildings will include Apple’s industrial designs shop, or if that work will take place in some undisclosed portion of Apple’s enormous ‘mothership.’
Also undisclosed: what Apple will do with all that fruit. iJam anyone?