Gov. Rick Perry announced March 9 that Apple Inc. will invest $304 million in a new campus in Austin, creating more than 3,600 new jobs.

The new campus is expected to double the size of Apple's workforce in Texas during the next decade. In exchange for Apple's commitment to create these new jobs, the state has offered Apple an investment of $21 million over 10 years through the Texas Enterprise Fund—a fund created in 2003 to attract businesses to the state.

The agreement is contingent upon the finalization of contracts and a local incentive agreement with the City of Austin and Travis County.

The City of Austin announced the same day that it welcomes Apple's plans for a new campus supporting the company's growing operations in the Americas with expanded customer support, sales and accounting functions for the region.

The city has offered the corporation a performance-based grant investment of $8.6 million over 10 years in exchange the $304 million capital investment.

According to Apple's Business Information form filed with the city, the campus property would consist of 38.81 acres of vacant land on West Parmer Lane and Delcour Drive, near its current Riata Vista location in Northwest Austin.

Specifically, Phase I of the project would consist of the new construction of a two-building campus off of Parmer Lane at Riata Vista totaling approximately 200,000 square feet with construction estimated to last one year. The expected start date would be June 1, 2012.

Phase II would be construction of up to 800,000 square feet of additional new office space.

Apple currently has 3,100 employees in Austin. Apple estimates of the 3,600 new full-time employees, 93 percent of the hires would be local.

The Austin campus would be the operational center of the company for the Americas region ouside of Apple's global offices in Cupertino, Calif.

According to the business information form, Apple is also looking at Phoenix as an alernative location due to its supply and cost of labor as well as its proximity to Cupertino.

According to Melissa Alvarado of the city's economic growth and redevelopment services office, a presentation on the proposal will be provided to the Austin City Council at a special called meeting March 15 at City Hall, and the proposal will be up for a vote at the regularly scheduled meeting March 22.

"It will be a two-part process with a presentation and then a vote," Alvarado said. "There will be a survey to gather citizen comments, but council will not vote until March 22."

According to the Governor's office, it will be one of the largest job creation projects in TEF and one of the largest capital investments by a TEF recipient.

Public comment began at 11:30 a.m. March 9 and will continue through 5 p.m. March 18.