Steve Jobs wanted to build his futuristic spaceship campus thirty years ago, reports the San Jose Mercury News.
Jobs wanted a “shimmery glass structure” surrounded by trees in rural San Jose. He had purchased the land and had lined up world-class architect I.M. Pei to design it.
“To me, it’s as if time hasn’t shifted — 30 years, same vision, same scope, same dream,” said real estate consultant Bob Feld, who worked with Jobs at the time.
So what happened?
It was 1983, just before Jobs unveiled the Macintosh.
Jobs first saw the Coyote Valley property on a helicopter ride with consultant Feld and Apple executive [Al] Eisenstat on a spring day. Feld remembers it well. As they circled the pastoral property, Jobs asked to land on the valley floor, not far from a rolling hillside near Bailey Avenue and across from the 1950s-era IBM campus.
They got out and walked through the tall grass. “He wanted to know how far up that hillside went,” Feld said. “He immediately saw that with the right kind of architecture, you could do some tram type of connection between the hillside property and the property on the valley floor.”
Whether it be a research center or a think tank, Feld said, “he saw incorporating the hillside, not taking the trees out, but somehow making that part of the facility.”
Feld was impressed with Jobs’ decisiveness. Most CEOs wanted fast and cheap — but not Jobs.
“In my mind, he was very unequivocal about the vision he saw there. He did not come across as ‘Let me think about it,’ ” Feld said. “When we landed there, he was seeing things, he was seeing it right there that minute. There was no hesitancy.”
Jobs bought the land the next day (cash!) but the project was delayed by San Jose development politics.
And then Jobs quit his own company in a spat with then-CEO John Sculley. In his absence the project foundered and the property was eventually sold.
San Jose’s mayor at the time is disappointed. “Just everything would have been different,” Tom McEnery told the Mercury News. “It would have changed everything.”
San Jose Mercury News: Steve Jobs’ first dream for an Apple headquarters: Coyote Valley, San Jose
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
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15 responses to “Steve Jobs Wanted To Build Spaceship Campus 30 Years Ago”
This building is perfect as a large cyclotron. Apple can help out fighting cancer this way.
SO WHAT HAPPENED???
What happened? NeXT happened, I.M. Pei redesigned Steve’s NYC apartment, inspired the all glass cube entrance of the fifth ave Apple store, Pei’s influence is found in all landmark Apple retail locations worldwide, as well as the upcoming infinite hoop
Loving “Infinite Hoop” :D
*small* cyclotron at that size.
keep fighting i want it to
http://www.lcajobs.co.uk/
It is a clickwheel.