Apple Expands in Irvine with 56K sf Lease at Spectrum Terrace

Apple has expanded its lease at an Irvine Company office campus in Irvine by adding 55,700 square feet to focus on cell phone chip manufacturing.

The Cupertino-based tech giant has signed a lease for the bottom two floors at a four-story building in Spectrum Terrace at 17800 Laguna Canyon Road, the Orange County Business Journal reported. The lease is expected to start in January

The expansion follows a deal by Apple last year to lease a 115,300-square-foot building at the Spectrum Terrace campus during its final phase of development. Terms of both deals were not disclosed.

The latest lease is the second-largest new office deal in OC in the second quarter, trailing Axonics’ 145,500-square-foot deal in April to move its headquarters to another Irvine Company-owned office complex in Irvine.

And it marks a win for the Newport Beach-based Irvine Company, whose nine-building Spectrum Terrace on 73 acres has 1.1million square feet of offices and a swimming pool.

The Irvine Company’s 590 office buildings across the U.S. are 90 percent leased, unidentified sources told the Business Journal. This week, the newspaper ranked Irvine owner Donald Bren the nation’s richest real estate developer, worth an estimated $18 billion.

Apple’s growing footprint in Irvine helps establish its chipmaker manufacturing foothold in OC.

The company is now posting jobs for hardware engineers and researchers for its radio frequency integrated circuit division, a chip used in cellphones to send and receive radio waves, according to the Business Journal. It’s also hiring engineers to develop semiconductors for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi links.

While Apple has long bought such chips from Irvine-based Skyworks Solutions, San Jose-based Broadcom and San Diego-based Qualcomm, industry watchers say it may make its own chips or employ its new wireless division to test chips from local suppliers.

— Dana Bartholomew