Apple’s Spaceship Campus Faces Delay, Won’t Take Off Until 2016

Apple’s ambitious new second campus, which looks like a spaceship design straight out of Hollywood, is being delayed according to new info from Bloomberg. The huge circular new headquarters won’t be fully operational until 2016, according to revised plans filed with the city of Cupertino on November 14. Apple won’t likely be able to begin construction on the building until 2014, according to the new timeline.

The 176-acre campus was famously introduced to the Cupertino city council by former Apple CEO Steve Jobs in June 2011, with a projected completion date of 2015. The plans remain relatively unchanged from how they looked at that time, Bloomberg reports, save for a few alterations: The company no longer wants to use trucks to haul away dirt; that a 1,000 person auditorium (which may become a site for future product launches) be moved further away from local roads than in the previous design; and that more parking spots are added to accommodate Apple’s large and growing workforce.

If you’re looking for more detail, Cupertino hopes to have the updated plans online and available for public download after Thanksgiving. But first it wants to add additional servers to support the projected increase in demand it expects from Apple fans.

Apple’s spaceship campus is designed to minimize environmental impact, thanks to on-site fuel cells and 650,000 square feet of solar panels, as well as increase the amount of green space on the site, thanks to three levels of underground parking and the circular design that features an orchard and park at its center. Jobs noted during its introduction that there isn’t a single piece of straight glass in its entire construction. 9to5Mac obtained some leaked images of what the inside of the facility looks like, at least in mock-ups, back in September. Delayed or not, once this building does go up, it’ll be an engineering marvel.