With Apple's New Austin Campus Underway, Is Apple Still Looking at North Carolina?

A year to the day after Apple announced plans to spend $1 billion on a new corporate campus in Austin, Texas, to initially support 5,000 employees with the potential to grow to 15,000, television station WRAL in Raleigh, North Carolina, has shared an update and a few new details related to North Carolina's attempts to attract the new campus.

apple austin new campus

Rendering of Apple's upcoming Austin campus

While it didn't conduct a public competition like Amazon, Apple was open about its plans to construct a new corporate campus, announcing its intentions in January 2018. A number of cities emerged as top contenders to land Apple's new campus, but by May 2018, sources were reporting that it was all but a "done deal" that the new campus would be located in North Carolina's Research Triangle Park (RTP) near Raleigh and Durham, with a temporary location for up to 1,000 employees planned for an existing office building in nearby Cary.

Months went by without an official announcement from Apple, and with Apple ultimately revealing the campus would be built in Austin, many have wondered what went wrong in what appeared to be late-stage negotiations between Apple and North Carolina.

The December announcement seemed to surprise the governor and state legislative leaders, who hours later released a joint statement touting economic growth in North Carolina and pledging to "keep doing everything we can" to attract jobs. [...]

Since then, there's been little explanation about how or why the deal dissolved by year's end.

But given the company's notorious penchant for secrecy, [North Carolina Senate Majority Leader Harry] Brown said, media coverage of the potential plans for North Carolina didn't help.

"Apple and companies like it are very sensitive to information getting out, and there's a possibility that could have hurt the negotiations with Apple a year ago," he said.

Even since the Austin announcement, there have been some curious developments in North Carolina that have hinted Apple may still have plans for the area. Most notably, in December 2018 just weeks after the Austin announcement, a mysterious entity known as Acute Investments purchased several tracts of land in RTP totaling around 280 acres, a massive investment that did not come with any public announcements. The Acute Investments representative listed on the deeds for the properties is local attorney Bruce Thompson, who is registered as a lobbyist for Apple, among other companies.

apple rtp land

Assemblage of seven properties in Research Triangle Park owned by Acute Investments and "controlled by Apple"

As a result, Apple has long been suspected of being the mystery buyer in RTP, and today's report from WRAL indicates that North Carolina Commerce Secretary Tony Copeland has finally confirmed that the land is indeed "controlled by Apple."

In an interview with WRAL News last week, Commerce Secretary Tony Copeland declined to provide specifics about the state's active recruitment of Apple. But he did point to a purchase of about 280 acres of Wake County land in Research Triangle Park for almost $50 million in late December 2018, just weeks after Apple's Austin announcement. [...]

Reached this week by phone, Thompson declined to comment.

But Copeland confirmed in the interview that the land is "controlled by Apple."

In addition, the state of North Carolina continues to refuse to release any information regarding its negotiations with Apple for the new campus, claiming that the project remains "open." Governmental authorities are typically required to release information to the public about their corporate recruitment efforts once a given project has ended, but North Carolina continues to insist the Apple project, known by its code name of "Project Bear," has not been closed.

So given that the new campus has been announced for Austin and ground has now been broken there, it's unclear what Apple's plans are for North Carolina. Are negotiations actually still underway for yet another Apple campus to be located in RTP, or is the continued "open" status of the project simply a ploy by Apple to try to keep its negotiations secret for as long as possible? And why spend tens of millions of dollars on RTP land when Austin had already been chosen?

Is Apple looking at yet another significant campus in the near future, or is it banking land and leaving negotiations with North Carolina open as a backup plan or to provide options for much further down the road? It's not clear when we'll have answers to these questions, but given Apple's appetite for office space, it would not be surprising if the company finds itself looking to expand again in the not too distant future.

Top Rated Comments

xxjumpmanj2395 Avatar
56 months ago

Austin is a good choice. The South is not.
Damn I must have forgot that Austin, Texas left the south magically. That's crazy.
Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Northbynorthwest Avatar
56 months ago
Austin is a good choice. The South is not.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Eauboy Avatar
56 months ago
While based on latitude Austin is a southern city it, and Texas as a whole, has little in common culturally with the states to its east. That's like saying LA is southern.

On the other hand, NC is sort of in the same boat. It's hard to argue that Raleigh-Durham are southern as well. South Carolina on the other hand...

Damn I must have forgot that Austin, Texas left the south magically. That's crazy.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
WildCowboy Avatar
56 months ago
That might explain why they're *just now* cutting under NC-540 to connect Louis Stephens Dr to the remainder of ...Louis Stephens Dr. I swear our DOT is run by a bunch of thumb-up-the-butt morons.. why didn't they just plan to do that when they built the highway? They KNEW the road was there; they actually CUT IT when they built the highway and buried it under rock and dirt! Now they gotta blast through it... idiots.
The two pieces of Louis Stephens were never connected. When the northern part was constructed in the early 2000s, it dead ended at Little, which also ended at that intersection. On the southern side, it was a dirt road that dead ended at a farmhouse south of where 540 eventually cut through. Only now is the old dirt road being converted to modern street even within the Breckenridge neighborhood.

540 was built with bridges over where Louis Stephens was going to be connected. They have some dirt on either side of 540 to move to make the connection that's now going through, but 540 itself was absolutely built to accommodate it.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
craigmak Avatar
56 months ago
Interesting, I live about 30 minutes from there. Hope they come and do something with it. I always figured this would be a way for those Duke guys to write-off the tickets and travel to the basketball games.
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)
OriginalMacRat Avatar
56 months ago
San Francisco bay area is getting too expensive.

Logical to divest in California rental properties and ramps up in cheaper states.
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Popular Stories

reset password request iphone

Warning: Apple Users Targeted in Phishing Attack Involving Rapid Password Reset Requests

Tuesday March 26, 2024 4:34 pm PDT by
Phishing attacks taking advantage of Apple's password reset feature have become increasingly common, according to a report from KrebsOnSecurity. Multiple Apple users have been targeted in an attack that bombards them with an endless stream of notifications or multi-factor authentication (MFA) messages in an attempt to cause panic so they'll respond favorably to social engineering. An...
iPhone Home Screen Gradient Blank Spaces 1

Sources: iOS 18 Lets Apps Be Placed Anywhere on Home Screen Grid

Sunday March 24, 2024 1:33 pm PDT by
iOS 18 will give iPhone users greater control over Home Screen app icon arrangement, according to sources familiar with the matter. While app icons will likely remain locked to an invisible grid system on the Home Screen, to ensure there is some uniformity, our sources say that users will be able to arrange icons more freely on iOS 18. For example, we expect that the update will introduce...
iPad Pro 2024 Landscape Camera Feature

New iPad Pro Again Rumored to Feature Landscape Front-Facing Camera

Monday March 25, 2024 5:43 am PDT by
The next-generation iPad Pro will feature a landscape-oriented front-facing camera for the first time, according to the Apple leaker known as "Instant Digital." Instant Digital reiterated the design change earlier today on Weibo with a simple accompanying 2D image. The post reveals that the entire TrueDepth camera array will move to the right side of the device, while the microphone will...
sonoma desktop wwdc

Apple Releases macOS Sonoma 14.4.1 With Fix for USB Hub Bug

Monday March 25, 2024 10:10 am PDT by
Apple today released macOS Sonoma 14.4.1, a minor update for the macOS Sonoma operating system that launched last September. macOS Sonoma 14.4.1 comes three weeks after macOS Sonoma 14.4. The ‌‌‌‌macOS Sonoma‌‌ 14.4‌.1 update can be downloaded for free on all eligible Macs using the Software Update section of System Settings. There's also a macOS 13.6.6 release for those who...
Generic iOS 18 Feature Purple

iOS 18 Will Finally Bring This Android Feature to iPhone

Monday March 25, 2024 6:42 am PDT by
iOS 18 will allow iPhone users to place app icons anywhere on the Home Screen grid, according to sources familiar with development of the software update. This basic feature has long been available on Android smartphones. While app icons will likely remain locked to an invisible grid system on the Home Screen, our sources said that users will be able to arrange icons more freely on iOS 18....
maxresdefault

Apple Announces WWDC 2024 Event for June 10 to 14

Tuesday March 26, 2024 10:02 am PDT by
Apple today announced that its 35th annual Worldwide Developers Conference is set to take place from Monday, June 10 to Friday, June 14. As with WWDC events since 2020, WWDC 2024 will be an online event that is open to all developers at no cost. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. WWDC 2024 will include online sessions and labs so that developers can learn about new...
apple maps 3d feature

Apple Maps May Gain Custom Routes With iOS 18

Tuesday March 26, 2024 3:10 pm PDT by
Apple may be planning to add support for "custom routes" in Apple Maps in iOS 18, according to code reviewed by MacRumors. Apple Maps does not currently offer a way to input self-selected routes, with Maps users limited to Apple's pre-selected options, but that may change in iOS 18. Apple has pushed an iOS 18 file to its maps backend labeled "CustomRouteCreation." While not much is revealed...
iphone reasons to upgrade

Apple Outlines 'Reasons to Upgrade' Your iPhone on New Website

Monday March 25, 2024 12:53 pm PDT by
Apple today added a "Why Upgrade" section to its website, which is aimed at encouraging customers with older iPhones to upgrade to a newer model. The website allows customers to compare the iPhone 11, 11 Pro, 11 Pro Max, 12, 12 mini, 12 Pro, and 12 Pro Max to the iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Plus, iPhone 15 Pro, or iPhone 15 Pro Max. Each comparison shows what new features someone with an older...