Companies that are as secretive as Apple always create intrigue when they make big behind-the-scenes moves, and this latest one is very big indeed. Silicon Valley Business Journal is reporting that Apple has purchased a gigantic 43-acre development site in North San Jose for unknown reasons. The deal for the development site closed last week and Apple paid a total of $138 million for the property, according to public documents reviewed by the Business Journal.
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So what is Apple doing with this giant site?
“The possibilities with the latest transaction are wide open: The undeveloped land is approved for up to 2.8 million square feet of office space — about the same size as Apple’s under-construction Spaceship campus in Cupertino,” writes the Business Journal. “What’s interesting in the latest transaction is that Apple opted to buy, not lease. It’s possible Apple wants more control over whatever it does there, and simply felt more comfortable owning the land. In addition to office space, Apple has been in the market for broad swaths of heavy R&D and industrial space, industry observers tell me.”
It’s entirely possible that this space will have something to do with Apple’s top-secret car project. A report from AppleInsider earlier this year revealed that Apple is renting out a facility in Sunnyvale, California that will include “a 4,239-square-foot ‘repair garage,'” among other things. Certainly a space as big as the one Apple just bought is big enough to handle manufacturing of some kind.
At any rate, we don’t expect Apple to explain what it’s doing with this big space so we’ll just have to speculate for the time being.
