Jerry Brown gives Apple’s new ‘spaceship’ campus a boost

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Governor Moonbeam has given the spaceship the green light.

Gov. Jerry Brown has fast-tracked a new Apple Computer campus in Cupertino, allowing the company to skip key pieces of the environmental review process for its planned new 175-acre headquarters.

The proposed four-story building, which was described by the company’s late chief executive, Steve Jobs, as looking “a little like a spaceship” because of its sleek round design, will have a solar roof, be surrounded by as many as 6,000 trees and include about 2.8 million square feet of office space and a massive new research facility, according to documents the company filed with the city.

The project is the first one to be approved under a law signed by Brown last year aimed at speeding up the often-cumbersome legal and environmental review process. Republicans criticized the bill for being too narrow in scope, saying Democrats should remove legal and environmental hurdles for more construction projects.

Apple is hoping to have the building completed by 2015.

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--Anthony York in Sacramento