Apple CEO Tim Cook makes surprise visit for Reno facility groundbreaking

Apple pulled off the biggest little surprise for its planned downtown Reno facility with a visit from its CEO.

More:A rare look inside Apple’s expanding Reno data center

Tim Cook joined Gov. Brian Sandoval and Reno Mayor Hillary Schieve today to celebrate the groundbreaking of its new Reno warehouse. The company first confirmed Cook’s appearance Wednesday morning just a couple of hours before the scheduled event.

The downtown shipping and receiving facility will support Apple’s data center located just east of Reno-Sparks. Cook described its Reno data center as a key component of an ecosystem that delivers billions of iMessages, more than a billion photos and tens of millions of Facetime video calls around the world each day.

“Reno plays an incredibly important role in the products and services that we provide our customers worldwide,” Cook said. “Without the data center here, none of this would be possible.”

The downtown warehouse at Evans Avenue and Sixth Street closes a long-running chapter in Apple’s Reno saga, which started in 2012 after Apple picked Reno as the site for its newest data center at the time. Building a facility in downtown’s tourism improvement district was a requirement for Apple to qualify for all of its tax abatements, which initially totaled $89 million as part of its original deal with state and local governments.

While the data center east of Reno-Sparks continued to expand through the years — Apple recently committed an extra $1 billion on top of the $1.6 billion it already invested in the facility —  the prospects for the downtown facility seemed uncertain. The fate of Apple's downtown warehouse was especially a big deal because it was seen as a key piece for improving the blighted Tessera district, which stalled without its marquee company.  The uncertainty lingered until permits showed Apple buying land at the exact same spot last year. Apple officially confirmed its plans for the facility a few months later.

The warehouse will be used to house equipment for the company’s expanding data center. By moving equipment through the special downtown district, Apple can get the full benefit from the tax abatements it negotiated as part of the data center deal.

The Reno Gazette-Journal toured the Apple data center on Tuesday, which now spans 1.1 million square feet. Employment at the facility is projected to reach 100 people, according to Apple. Construction from the expansion is expected to employ 300 people.

Attendees at the event included several people who were involved in the negotiations to bring Apple’s data center to the area.

Former Reno Mayor Bob Cashell says simply getting Reno’s foot in the door seemed like a tall order at the time.

“The challenge was if they would actually come visit us,” Cashell said.

Steve Hill, who spearheaded negotiations as the executive director of the Governor’s Office of Economic Development, echoed Cashell’s sentiment.

Hill credited Apple’s arrival for kickstarting a wave of big-name businesses coming to the area. These include Tesla and its $5 billion Gigafactory as well as Switch, which is building the largest data center campus in the world at the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center. Google also bought land at the same industrial park last year, with signs pointing to a new data center as well.

Not to be outdone, Apple purchased all the remaining land at the Reno Technology Park, where its data center campus is located.

Apple’s arrival in 2012 was especially crucial given how the state was still suffering from the after-effects of a historic recession at the time, Hill said.

“If someone told me six years ago about the progress this city would make and the opportunities it would have moving forward, I would have taken that as an outcome that we couldn’t have expected to be better,” Hill said.

Gov. Sandoval, meanwhile, pointed to the number of jobs created in the state since the Apple deal. After posting the highest unemployment rate in the country during the recession, Nevada as a whole added almost 250,000 jobs after the Apple announcement as the economy improved and businesses started coming to the state.

“Apple has been the catalyst,” Sandoval said.

The growth since the Apple deal, however, has also posed challenges for the area. At the top of the list is affordability as a housing crunch marked by skyrocketing median home prices and one of the highest rent increases in the nation grips Reno-Sparks.

In addition to tight housing supply due to near-zero construction during the recession, area wages also have failed to keep pace with rising housing costs.

While the Apple story and Reno’s recovery has been “amazing,” especially given what the region went through during the downturn, it’s important to address the issues now arising in the community such as housing affordability, the school system and infrastructure, said Reno City Councilman Oscar Delgado.

Choosing job quality over job quantity, for example, can help address the affordability problem, he said.

“We should be (picky),” Delgado said when asked about the types of jobs to bring into the community.

“These are tough conversations but we need to bring these to the table.”

Washoe County Commissioner Bob Lucey agreed.

As the Apples and the Teslas of the world come to Reno, it’s important to maintain the quality of life that is attracting many of those companies here in the first place, Lucey said.

“As we see all this influx of businesses to the region, we need to have a balanced equation for things like housing and quality of life,” Lucey said. “You don’t want people to come here just to work here, you want them to live here.”