Stanford Research Park (SRP) is a

technology park A science park (also called a "university research park", "technology park”, "technopark", “technopole", or a "science and technology park" (STP)) is defined as being a property-based development that accommodates and fosters the growt ...

established in 1951 as a joint initiative between

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...

and the

City of Palo Alto Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. The city was esta ...

. It has more than 150 companies, including

Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...

, Tesla Motors,

TIBCO TIBCO Software Inc. is an American business intelligence software company founded in 1997 in Palo Alto, California. It has headquarters in Palo Alto, California, and offices in North America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and South A ...

and

VMware VMware, Inc. is an American cloud computing and virtualization technology company with headquarters in Palo Alto, California. VMware was the first commercially successful company to virtualize the x86 architecture. VMware's desktop software ru ...

; previously, it housed high-profile companies, including

Steve Jobs Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American entrepreneur, industrial designer, media proprietor, and investor. He was the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple; the chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar; ...

NeXT Computer NeXT Computer (also called the NeXT Computer System) is a workstation computer that was developed, marketed, and sold by NeXT Inc. It was introduced in October 1988 as the company's first and flagship product, at a price of , aimed at the hig ...

Xerox PARC PARC (Palo Alto Research Center; formerly Xerox PARC) is a research and development company in Palo Alto, California. Founded in 1969 by Jacob E. "Jack" Goldman, chief scientist of Xerox Corporation, the company was originally a division of Xero ...

, and

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dust ...

. It has been called "an engine for

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo Cou ...

" and "the epicenter of Silicon Valley".

Facilities

The park covers 700

acre The acre is a unit of land area used in the imperial and US customary systems. It is traditionally defined as the area of one chain by one furlong (66 by 660 feet), which is exactly equal to 10 square chains, of a square mile, 4,840 square ...

s (2.8 km²) This report also includes a map of the research park and has 10 million square feet of

commercial real estate Commercial property, also called commercial real estate, investment property or income property, is real estate (buildings or land) intended to generate a profit, either from capital gains or rental income. Commercial property includes office ...

in an area surrounding

Page Mill Road There are 21 routes assigned to the "G" zone of the California Route Marker Program, which designates county routes in California. The "G" zone includes county highways in Monterey, San Benito, San Luis Obispo, Santa Clara, and Santa Cruz co ...

, south west of El Camino Real and extending beyond

Foothill Expressway There are 21 routes assigned to the "G" zone of the California Route Marker Program, which designates county routes in California. The "G" zone includes county highways in Monterey, San Benito, San Luis Obispo, Santa Clara, and Santa Cruz ...

to Arastradero Road. As of January 2018, the park's 140 buildings house over 150 different companies and their 23,000 employees. It is currently home to companies like

Lockheed Martin The Lockheed Martin Corporation is an American aerospace, arms, defense, information security, and technology corporation with worldwide interests. It was formed by the merger of Lockheed Corporation with Martin Marietta in March 1995. It ...

, Tesla Motors,

Nest A nest is a structure built for certain animals to hold eggs or young. Although nests are most closely associated with birds, members of all classes of vertebrates and some invertebrates construct nests. They may be composed of organic materi ...

Skype Skype () is a proprietary telecommunications application operated by Skype Technologies, a division of Microsoft, best known for VoIP-based videotelephony, videoconferencing and voice calls. It also has instant messaging, file transfer, debi ...

and SAP.

is the park's largest tenant as of January 2018. SRP cites several benefits to attract tenants, including: * Access to

’s students * Proximity to

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which h ...

firms on

Sand Hill Road Sand Hill Road, often shortened to just "Sand Hill" or "SHR", is an arterial road in western Silicon Valley, California, running through Palo Alto, Menlo Park, and Woodside, notable for its concentration of venture capital companies. The road ...

* Sustainable buildings *

Palo Alto Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. The city was es ...

weather ("261 days of sunshine per year and only 17 inches of rain") In 2016, SRP contributed an estimated $775 million in terms of economic activity to

and approximately $2.4 billion to

Santa Clara County Santa Clara County, officially the County of Santa Clara, is the sixth-most populous county in the U.S. state of California, with a population of 1,936,259, as of the 2020 census. Santa Clara County and neighboring San Benito County together ...

. In 2016, SRP contributed more than $45 million in taxes (across local, state, and federal).

History

After

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

found itself in difficult financial circumstances. But given that it was rich in land,

Provost and Dean of Engineering

Frederick Terman Frederick Emmons Terman (; June 7, 1900 – December 19, 1982) was an American professor and academic administrator. He was the dean of the school of engineering from 1944 to 1958 and provost from 1955 to 1965 at Stanford University. He is widel ...

proposed a Stanford-affiliated and R&D-focused

business park A business park or office park is a designated area of land in which many office buildings are grouped together. These types of developments are often located in suburban areas where land and building costs are more affordable, and are typically ...

that would generate income for Stanford as well as tax revenue for the

community. Stanford University and the City of Palo Alto partnered to found the park, which was initially named Stanford Industrial Park. In 1951, the initiative was authorized and 209 acres were allocated. In 1953

Varian Associates Varian Associates was one of the first high-tech companies in Silicon Valley. It was founded in 1948 by Russell H. and Sigurd F. Varian, William Webster Hansen, and Edward Ginzton to sell the klystron, the first vacuum tube which could amplif ...

moved in as the park's first tenant. In the early days, Stanford tightly controlled development, without the help of an outside developer. It also rigorously screened potential tenants to ensure they were in line with university objectives. By 1956

established its world headquarters in SRP. The park acquired more land as it grew from 40 tenants in 1960 to 100 tenants in 1985 to over 150 as of January 2018. The name was changed in the 1970s to Stanford Research Park from Stanford Industrial Park to highlight "the focus of cooperation between the university and the tech companies". In 1991, the Stanford Management Company was established to manage the university's financial and real estate assets, including SRP.

Controversies

In 2014 the Palo Alto City Council allowed a proposed 17-acre

affordable housing Affordable housing is housing which is deemed affordable to those with a household income at or below the median as rated by the national government or a local government by a recognized housing affordability index. Most of the literature on af ...

community with 180 units in the Stanford Research Park to proceed, despite protests by neighborhood residents. Called Mayfield Place, the community opened in June 2017. In 2016, Stanford University and 12 of the park's largest companies formed the Transportation Management Association in order to mitigate

traffic congestion Traffic congestion is a condition in transport that is characterized by slower speeds, longer trip times, and increased vehicular queueing. Traffic congestion on urban road networks has increased substantially since the 1950s. When traffic de ...

from employee commutes, noting that it was making companies within the park less attractive to current and prospective employees. SRP lacks a nearby

Caltrain Caltrain (reporting mark JPBX) is a California commuter rail line serving the San Francisco Peninsula and Santa Clara Valley (Silicon Valley). The southern terminus is in San Jose at Tamien station with weekday rush hour service running as fa ...

station. The group is exploring several options, including "new shuttles,

carpool Carpooling (also car-sharing, ride-sharing and lift-sharing) is the sharing of Automobile, car journeys so that more than one person travels in a car, and prevents the need for others to have to drive to a location themselves. By having more ...

routes and a trip-planning app".

Tenants

The following tenants currently have offices at the Stanford Research Park. * VMware * Tesla *

Dupont DuPont de Nemours, Inc., commonly shortened to DuPont, is an American multinational chemical company first formed in 1802 by French-American chemist and industrialist Éleuthère Irénée du Pont de Nemours. The company played a major role in ...

Ford Ford commonly refers to: * Ford Motor Company, an automobile manufacturer founded by Henry Ford * Ford (crossing), a shallow crossing on a river Ford may also refer to: Ford Motor Company * Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company * Ford F ...

* HP *

Cooley LLP Cooley LLP is an American international law firm, headquartered in Palo Alto, California, with offices worldwide. The firm's practice areas include corporate, litigation, intellectual property, fund formation, public markets, employment, life ...

* Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati * Stanford Genome Technology Center * Jazz Pharmaceuticals * Lockheed Martin * PARC (a Xerox Company) * MZ *

Electric Power Research Institute EPRI, is an American independent, nonprofit organization that conducts research and development related to the generation, delivery, and use of electricity to help address challenges in the energy industry, including reliability, efficiency, aff ...

* SAP * StartX * TIBCO * Varian *Rivian

References

{{Palo Alto, California 1951 establishments in California Economy of the San Francisco Bay Area Buildings and structures in Palo Alto, California

Research Park The following is a list of science park, technology parks and biomedical parks of the world, organized by continent. Asia ASEAN Economic Community Report listing all the Economic Zones in the ASEAN Economic Community froUNIDO Viet Nam China ...

Science parks in the United States

Facilities

History

Controversies

Tenants

See also

References