Is there an ominous message for Utah in Novell Inc.'s plan to build a new office campus in San Jose?
Not at all, according to a spokesman for Novell, which has operations in both California and Utah.But contrary to an electronic memo sent to employees at the company's Utah headquarters Friday, Novell has decided to construct buildings on 48 acres it owns in north San Jose.
Novell submitted a master plan to the city of San Jose this week for a 1.5-million-square-foot office complex. It is seeking permits to begin work next summer on four office buildings totaling 700,000 square feet.
The buildings are expected to be finished in 1998 and will be used by the nearly 1,200 Novell employees who work in San Jose, said Peter Troop, senior director of in-ves-tor relations.
Those employees currently work in offices leased by Novell. The offices are scattered around a four-block area and lack the sort of amenities Novell's 3,000 Utah employees enjoy, including a caf-e-te-ria.
"This has been an issue for some time," Troop said. Novell bought the 48-acres on North First Street in 1991.
Several Utah employees told the Deseret News an in-house e-mail memo sent out Friday said Novell's board of directors had not yet made a final decision about building new offices at the north San Jose site. The memo said the company had plans to begin "prep-ar-a-tion for building."
But after some checking, Troop told the Deseret News the board "has approved this first phase and is behind improving the work environment" in San Jose.
A San Jose Mercury News story about Novell's building plans said the networking software company plans to add nearly 3,000 jobs in Silicon Valley over the next six years. It quoted a Novell vice president as saying the job growth would be in departments developing products for the Internet and intranets.
Troop said that report is erroneous.
"There are not plans to hire 3,000 workers in San Jose," he said.
The California newspaper extrapolated that figure based on the square footage of buildings indicated on Novell's master plan, Troop said.
While Novell will continue to grow in both Utah and California, it is not planning large-scale hirings in California. Novell remains firmly committed and rooted in Utah, he added, and has no plans to relocate to California.
"There is nothing for the company to gain from such a move, and it's not practical," Troop said. "One of Novell's key strengths is its geographic diversity. The talent pool in Utah is critical to the company's success and becomes more so over time."