Apple Park cost estimates: $180M theater, $17M fitness center, $104M R&D facility & more

Using its Open Building Permit Repository, the BuildZoom service has determined what it takes to build Apple’s massive $5 billion headquarters.

Author Sasha David explains that they’ve estimated the minimum costs for each of the fifteen major structures at Apple Park and ranked them by descending value.

Here’s the breakdown:

  • Main Building—$427,570,867
  • Steve Jobs Theater—$179,437,885
  • Visitor Center—$109,670,640
  • Office Building—$115,370,380
  • Parking Structures—$113,731,332
  • South Testing Building—$72,350,000
  • Central Plant—$35,636,124
  • North Testing Building—$31,492,000
  • Parking Garage/Data Center—$30,353,171
  • Fitness Center—$16,731,000
  • Tantau Reception Building—$11,500,000
  • Wolfe Reception Building—$7,500,000
  • Maintenance Building—$1,955,000
  • Marcom Building—$994,000
  • Glendenning Barn—$360,000

To me, the most interesting aspect is the total construction cost of a pair of research and development buildings (North and South Testing Building) at $100+ million.

That’s just the construction cost—the sophisticated testing equipment that will be installed in those buildings could easily cost more than the buildings themselves.

You know no expense will be spared because the top floor of each building houses the department comprising industrial design and human interface teams headed by Jony Ive.

BuildZoom uses various construction data comprised of more than $120 million building permits, including permits for large-scale projects like Apple Park and the Tesla Gigafactory.

I think these estimates are actually quite conservative because such large-scale projects always incur various hidden costs that BuildZoom likely isn’t aware of.

For example, Apple’s 2.8 million square foot ring-shaped glass structure was originally estimated to cost $3 billion to build, but the budget is said to have ballooned to about five billion dollars because of Apple’s perfectionism, Bloomberg Businessweek reported back in 2013.

How much Apple’s new headquarters will ultimately cost, do you think?