The Sunnyvale Sun
News
Yahoo!'s bags are packed, ready to go to Santa Clara
Unclear whether the campus is staying or going with the move
By JASON GOLDMAN-HALL
On the heels of Sun Microsystems announcing plans to pull out of its Sunnyvale operations, another Sunnyvale technology giant has announced plans to expand into neighboring cities.
Yahoo!--one of Sunnyvale's anchor companies located off N. Mathilda Avenue in the Moffett Park area--recently announced the purchase of almost 43 acres of Santa Clara land off Tasman Drive. Yahoo!'s corporate headquarters in Sunnyvale currently sits on almost one million square feet of land. Yahoo! already uses approximately 700,000 square feet of land in Santa Clara.
Although the two situations occurred within a short period of time, the city of Sunnyvale and the Chamber of Commerce both say the connection between Sun and Yahoo! stops there.
"There's no dotted line between the two," said Sunnyvale communications officer John Pilger.
Pilger and Suzi Blackman, Chamber of Commerce president and CEO, pointed out Sun Microsystems left Sunnyvale because it was cutting jobs and shrinking back into its core campus off Highway
101 in Santa Clara, while Yahoo! is buying new land because its operations are expanding.
Pilger said Yahoo! has not said it is seeking to move its campus to Santa Clara. Yahoo! spokespeople could not be reached for comment.
Yahoo! moving operations out of town could hurt the local economy because many small Sunnyvale businesses survive by serving larger companies.
Blackman said Sunnyvale motels and hotels, cleaning and maintenance and other small businesses do a lot of business with high tech companies, so losing those big fish could hurt the entire pond.
"I don't think that we've had the possibility of a company that size moving in a long time," she said.
Blackman said Yahoo! has always maintained strong ties to Sunnyvale, and has once before moved out of the city--into Santa Clara--before moving back to its current location. The fact that Yahoo! is headquartered within Sunnyvale has also been a point of civic pride for many years. Blackman said it would be a loss of prestige for that to end.
Pilger also pointed out Sunnyvale is not just a location businesses are leaving or growing out of. Developer Jay Paul is currently working on Class A office space projects on old Lockheed Martin land less than a mile from Yahoo!, anticipated to factor into Sunnyvale's next economic boom.
