“We do have a shot at building the best office building in the world”
Architectural rendering of the new Apple headquarters. Screengrab: Cupertino City Council
On Monday, Steve Jobs unveiled the iCloud. On Tuesday, he revealed his plans for Apple’s (AAPL) new earthly headquarters: a four-story circle of glass big enough to house 13,000 employees.
“It’s a little like a spaceship has landed,” he told Cupertino’s star-struck city council.
His 20-minute presentation mixed carrots (150 landscaped acres where now there are concrete parking lots) and one big stick (taking the city’s largest tax base to nearby Mountain View) and could serve as a lesson to CEOs around the world in how to bend a local government to your will. Jobs made no promises he didn’t want to make (no free Wi-Fi, no Cupertino Apple Store), yet by the end it was clear that there was no way his project would not get approved. Groundbreaking would begin in 2012 for occupancy in 2015.
Below: The video posted on YouTube by the Cupertino, Calif., City Council.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtuz5OmOh_M&feature=player_embedded#at=316]