Intel Plots Campus Expansion in Santa Clara

Intel Corporation is looking into expanding its operations in its home city of Santa Clara with two new buildings.

The semiconductor chip maker plans to build a new manufacturing plant as well as a central utility building to support the new facility in the Silicon Valley city, the San Francisco Business Times reported.

The new buildings would rise three stories and span approximately 107,000 square feet in two adjacent structures at Intel’s Bowers Campus at the corner of Bowers Avenue and Central Expressway. Intel has had a presence at this site since the 1970s, according to the Business Times.

Intel’s Bowers Campus in total encompasses approximately 26 acres. The two proposed buildings would be on a 2.4-acre portion of the Bowers Campus. The company’s main headquarters building is about a mile away at 2200 Mission College Boulevard.

One of the planned buildings will include manufacturing space, tools, servers and electrical and power facilities. The utility building will hold equipment for heating, cooling and power to support the manufacturing next door. The company plans to have current employees run the new facilities.

Santa Clara officials are examining Intel’s architectural review application as the proposal makes its way through the planning process. It’s expected to advance at a hearing early next year before Intel receives building permits for the structures. If approved, construction would begin in the middle of next year and take about a year to complete.

The proposal marks the latest change to Intel’s real estate holdings in Santa Clara. The corporation sold one of its industrial properties at 1501 Martin Avenue last month, the Mercury News reported.

Intel’s biggest competitor, multi-trillion-dollar chipmaker Nvidia, has similarly been shaking up its real estate holdings in its hometown of Santa Clara. Last month, Nvidia submitted an architectural review for a new building for its headquarters campus slated to span 692,634 square feet. It bought its headquarters campus outright last year from Preylock Holdings for $374 million and has bought office buildings. The firm spent hundreds of millions of dollars buying other Santa Clara office buildings this year.

— Chris Malone Méndez