About the Apple spaceship HQ

The Apple 'Spaceship' headquarters proposal is being discussed to death, so I will only add a little bit here.

I have been on the site where it is to be built. It is a completely unexceptional sprawl of big blocky Silicon Valley office buildings surrounded by endless asphalt parking lottage. The buildings use the usual massive amounts of power for air conditioning, the parking acreage makes everything on the outside even hotter, and while it's not uglier than most office parks, it doesn't contribute to the landscape either.

So if city government has the choice between leaving it as-is or replacing it with a green campus that will provide a huge construction boost to the local economy while being built and will be a symbol of community progressiveness and pride afterward, there's really only one way it makes sense for them to lean. And that's absent any threats that Apple might move its tax base out of the city.

The biggest downside to this project, and I mean this quite seriously, is that the eye-catching campus is right alongside a major freeway (Hwy 280 northbound). Rubbernecking may be a big problem.