Adobe Picks Lehi as Site of Tech Campus

Software giant Adobe Systems has announced that it has selected Lehi, UT as the site of its new 230,000-square-foot tech campus, which will bring up to 1,000 jobs to the area over the next 20 years, according to a report in the Daily Herald.

Representatives involved in the planning process, Utah, Lehi City, Adobe and Economic Development Corporation of Utah, said Adobe will build a campus on a 38-acre undeveloped site west of Traverse Mountain and similar to Adobe’s corporate offices in San Jose, California with a skywalk between multilevel LEED certified buildings.

Adobe is the third computer company to open offices in Lehi and joins Micron, IM Flash and Microsoft at the city’s north border. Additionally, the National Security Agency is building a 65-megawatt data center at Camp Williams north of Lehi.

When plans for the new tech campus were announced in August, Adobe CFO Mark Garrett told media that it would be built in either Salt Lake or Utah counties. The expansion is directly tied to the Utah-based Omniture arm of the company, which now accounts for 10 percent of Adobe’s total revenues. Adobe purchased Utah County Orem Internet analytics company in September 2009 for $1.8 billion.

The Lehi project will be built in at least two phases creating at least 250 construction jobs. Construction for Phase 1 of the new 230,000-square-foot campus is expected to begin mid-2011 and to be completed in the fall of 2012, providing facilities for approximately 1,000 employees.  Adobe’s Omniture Business Unit today employs approximately 620 people in Utah. Adobe’s expansion of operations in Utah could create up to 1,000 new jobs in the state over the next 20 years.

The new Adobe campus will be just down the street from the massive IM Flash Technologies fabrication facility and within sight of a number of other software and IT companies located in the Thanksgiving Point business park. When the first phase is completed in 2012, Adobe will be hiring or transferring 670 employees, about 620 from the Omniture offices, to the new campus.

Expected to bring in more than $134 million in taxes over the next 20 years, the move could bring in as much as $1.6 billion in wages paid over that time. Salaries will be 200 percent of the local average.