By Brian Gordon for the Raleigh News & Observer

Apple has paused development on its promised $552 million campus in Research Triangle Park, the company told The News & Observer on Monday, as it looks to extend its construction timeline in North Carolina.

The company has informed the state Department of Commerce it seeks to suspend the project for four years, according to a source familiar with the site. In a statement Monday, Apple said it is still “looking forward to developing our new campus in the coming years” and noted it has added around 600 positions in the Raleigh area since the company announced its RTP campus in April 2021.

Three years ago, Apple committed to invest at least a half-billion dollars to build a new campus on the Wake County side of RTP by the end of 2031. No construction has begun.

Site plans filed last summer showed the campus would include three office buildings, three accessory buildings and a parking garage —totaling nearly 900,000 square feet on either side of N.C. 540.

The company will only benefit from North Carolina’s job development investment grant — worth up to $845 million in payroll tax benefits through the year 2061 — if it reaches certain annual hiring and investment targets.

While the company has more than six years to complete its campus, its hiring clock began last year with an obligation to have added a minimum of 126 local workers. This jobs target increases to 378 total positions by the end of 2024 and increases up to 2,700 jobs in 2032.

This week was the first time Apple has publicly commented on its RTP campus plans since announcing the project in 2021.

The Triangle Business Journal initially reported the company’s planned pause Monday.

For now, Apple leases office space at the MetLife campus in Cary. The California-based tech giant is also leasing a four-story, 139,000-square-foot building in Durham, near Raleigh-Durham International Airport, according to multiple sources familiar with that site.

Read more here.

The preceding article was written by Brian Gordon and originally appeared on June 29, 2024 at the Raleigh News & Observer’s website and is made available here for educational purposes only. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 106A-117 of the U.S. Copyright Law. Read the entire article here.