Apple Park consumed more by parking space than actual offices - report

Posted:
in General Discussion
When it opens to workers later this month, Apple Park will reportedly offer nearly 3.5 million square feet of parking -- even more than the roughly 3.4 million square feet of offices people will actually work in.

Image Credit: Matthew Roberts
Image Credit: Matthew Roberts


The campus will have just under 11,000 parking spots meant to accommodate up to 14,000 people, according to The Economist. While many of these will be located under the ring-shaped central building, everyone else will be relegated to giant garages farther south.

The situation may be linked as much to laws in Cupertino as to the size of Apple's project. The city has specified parking minimums for different properties, likely forcing Apple to build on an enormous scale even though it operates private shuttles, offers incentives to carpool, and will have spots for some 2,000 bicycles at Apple Park.

Roughly 28 percent of the staff at Apple's current headquarters at 1 Infinite Loop use alternate means of transportation. Indeed local government is ultimately hoping to push this to 34 percent at Apple Park, and may penalize the company if it doesn't meet targets.

Apple has spun a good deal of the publicity for Apple Park around how environmentally friendly the campus will be. Various buildings -- including the ring and garages -- will be topped with solar panels, and Apple has touted the ring as the world's biggest naturally-ventilated structure. Much of the outside space will be decorated with trees, at least once landscaping is complete.
patchythepirate
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 40
    neilmneilm Posts: 985member
    Newsflash: Cars take up more space than people.

    :yawn:
    welshdogmike1andrewj5790StrangeDayscalicornchipjdw[Deleted User]
  • Reply 2 of 40
    welshdogwelshdog Posts: 1,897member
    AppleInsider said:

    will have spots for some 2,000 bicycles at Apple Park.
    Is the overall property fenced?  Two thousand (or less) bicycles will present quite a tempation to thieves if they can get access easily.
  • Reply 3 of 40
    SoliSoli Posts: 10,035member
    neilm said:
    Newsflash: Cars take up more space than people.

    :yawn:
    I don't see the correlation with your comment. Offices take up more space than people, too.
    muthuk_vanalingamgatorguy
  • Reply 4 of 40
    karmadavekarmadave Posts: 369member
    The new campus is definitely going to create a traffic nightmare on Highway 280 & Wolfe Road 😱
    baconstang
  • Reply 5 of 40
    sdw2001sdw2001 Posts: 18,015member
    I don't know, but I'd venture a guess that this isn't uncommon for many corporate campuses.  
  • Reply 6 of 40
    Eric_WVGGEric_WVGG Posts: 966member
    This has a real impact on Apple's ability to attract and maintain talent. I personally know four people who either passed on or quit jobs at Apple because of the suburban lifestyle of Cupertino. A huge part of that is "car culture." (All eventually returned to New York City, where they get around on foot, bicycle or subway.)

    There was a pretty good discussion about free parking on Hacker News last week:
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14067658
    edited April 2017 toranagajeffharris
  • Reply 7 of 40
    I guess with the news about pushing their suppliers to renewables, it doesn't look great if most of your signature building is devoted to parking cars. 
    I guess I'll leave it to Apple to square that circle. 
  • Reply 8 of 40
    mike1mike1 Posts: 3,275member
    Eric_WVGG said:
    This has a real impact on Apple's ability to attract and maintain talent. I personally know four people who either passed on or quit jobs at Apple because of the suburban lifestyle of Cupertino. A huge part of that is "car culture." (All eventually returned to New York City, where they get around on foot, bicycle or subway.)

    There was a pretty good discussion about free parking on Hacker News last week:
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14067658
    And the vast majority of people who work in NYC commute there because it is either too expensive or not a pleasant place to live. I'll take the suburban car culture any day. Different strokes.
    magman1979lordjohnwhorfincalimacgui
  • Reply 9 of 40
    lkrupplkrupp Posts: 10,557member
    I guess with the news about pushing their suppliers to renewables, it doesn't look great if most of your signature building is devoted to parking cars. 
    I guess I'll leave it to Apple to square that circle. 
    What if the majority are electric vehicles, charging with Apple’s 100% renewable electricity? And as the article states, the number of parking spots may be related to Cupertino regulations than based on actual need by Apple. There’s always has to be someone to pull a negative out of Apple’s excellent environmental advances. 
    edited April 2017 andrewj5790lordjohnwhorfincalibaconstangpropodlostkiwi
  • Reply 10 of 40
    jungmarkjungmark Posts: 6,926member
    welshdog said:
    AppleInsider said:

    will have spots for some 2,000 bicycles at Apple Park.
    Is the overall property fenced?  Two thousand (or less) bicycles will present quite a tempation to thieves if they can get access easily.
    The racks are probably near multiple entrances with lots of security cameras and probably some walk-about security guards.
    edited April 2017
  • Reply 11 of 40
    Eric_WVGGEric_WVGG Posts: 966member
    mike1 said:

    And the vast majority of people who work in NYC commute there because it is either too expensive or not a pleasant place to live. I'll take the suburban car culture any day. Different strokes.
    Source? According to the census, three million people live and work here, 600,000 come in to work from New Jersey or upstate every day. The notion that "the vast majority commute here" strikes me as both anecdotally wrong and logistically ludicrous. 
    afrodrijeffharris
  • Reply 12 of 40
    jungmarkjungmark Posts: 6,926member

    I guess with the news about pushing their suppliers to renewables, it doesn't look great if most of your signature building is devoted to parking cars. 
    I guess I'll leave it to Apple to square that circle. 
    Regulations demand certain number of spaces for a number of employees. Most of the parking will be hidden away/stacked up so the surface area is much less than the square footage listed. 
    escan
  • Reply 13 of 40
    Why does it even matter if there's more car space than office space? Does it have something to do with productivity? There seems to be plenty of space at Apple Park and that space seems to have enough room for employees. If Apple eliminated some of that car space for more humans, it wouldn't necessarily improve productivity. Is this office space to parking space ratio something that's questioned about with every company? I wonder why people always have something useless to say in regards to anything Apple does or doesn't do. It's quite likely Apple has all that parking area in order to have enough rooftop solar arrays to provide for that 100% renewable energy. On top of a couple of parking garages seems like a great place to put banks of solar panels.
    calimuthuk_vanalingam
  • Reply 14 of 40
    Eric_WVGG said:
    mike1 said:

    And the vast majority of people who work in NYC commute there because it is either too expensive or not a pleasant place to live. I'll take the suburban car culture any day. Different strokes.
    Source? According to the census, three million people live and work here, 600,000 come in to work from New Jersey or upstate every day. The notion that "the vast majority commute here" strikes me as both anecdotally wrong and logistically ludicrous. 
    I have no idea about either of those numbers, but yes, while 3 million may live there, my sister and her ex have 4 children, none of which have jobs and all live in Manhattan. I'm sure that a large number of the 3 million don't actually work at all so, for them, commuting to anything is just not in the equation. 
    cali
  • Reply 15 of 40
    quadra 610quadra 610 Posts: 6,757member
    Doomed, of course.
    calisuddenly newton
  • Reply 16 of 40
    Eric_WVGGEric_WVGG Posts: 966member

    I have no idea about either of those numbers, but yes, while 3 million may live there, my sister and her ex have 4 children, none of which have jobs and all live in Manhattan. I'm sure that a large number of the 3 million don't actually work at all so, for them, commuting to anything is just not in the equation. 
    The population here is 8 million people, the 3 million is of people who live and work in New York City.
    afrodri
  • Reply 17 of 40
    loquiturloquitur Posts: 137member
    What is the ratio of EV charging spaces to non-EV spaces?
    To the extent that the $5B campus is future-oriented, the ratio should
    be nontrivial.

    edited April 2017
  • Reply 18 of 40
    jbellajbella Posts: 29member
    This sounds about right for a sub-urban office park. 
  • Reply 19 of 40
    coolfactorcoolfactor Posts: 2,239member
    I must say, I'm proud to be an Apple fan when I see that massive "Apple City" come together so well.
    calilostkiwi
  • Reply 20 of 40
    slurpyslurpy Posts: 5,382member
    Clearly Apple had no clue what it was doing when designing this building and parking areas, they should have consulted the 11 yr old trolls on this and other forums for advice. 
    SoliStrangeDayscaliescanlkruppmuthuk_vanalingamlostkiwiai46suddenly newtonmacgui
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