Apple has snapped up a 10-year lease for a large, 314,000-square-foot warehouse in Milpitas, California, approximately a fifteen minute drive from Cupertino.
The space is located at McCarthy Creekside, a new multiphase development located in the city of Milpitas. Apple is reportedly paying in the vicinity of 90 cents per square foot. According to developer Joey McCarthy, McCarthy Creekside is intended for “industrial, R&D, [and] manufacturing.”
Apple’s lease of the warehouse space further squeezes the amount of available vacant real estate in Silicon Valley. Previously 1.5 percent, this deal reduces it even further down to a tiny 0.7 percent.
“The shortage of available warehouse space is restricting tenant mobility,” Lena Tutko, research manager for Colliers International, told the Silicon Valley Business Journal. “Warehouse users are often left with two options: renewing their lease, as seen by the top four of five deals of the third quarter, or relocate outside of the Valley.”
Apple, of course, already owns or leases plenty of offices around Silicon Valley. What makes this interesting, however, is that it’s not office space, but rather space for possible manufacturing. At present, most of Apple’s manufacturing takes place with third party companies located outside the U.S.
One possible theory (and we should stress that it is only a theory) is that this new space may have something to do with Apple’s automotive plans. This wouldn’t be the only place to be used for Apple’s Project Titan efforts. Apple reportedly has a 300,000-square-foot automotive campus in Sunnyvale, California. This is comprised of seven buildings.
Late last year, a photo posted on Google Earth meanwhile showed a former Fiat Chrysler Automobiles facility in Arizona that Apple might be using to test autonomous vehicles. This “proving ground” supposedly includes urban street configurations, such as crosswalks and intersections, which would be necessary for putting a self-driving vehicle through its paces.
Source: Biz Journals
