Apple’s Expansion Plans Don’t Include N. Va.

Apple is opening new offices and expanding others across the U.S., but those plans do not include a Fairfax County presence, according to an announcement the company made yesterday.

The iPhone maker will be investing $1 billion in a new, expanded campus in Austin, Texas, while opening new offices in Seattle, San Diego and the Los Angeles area, and expanding existing offices in Pittsburgh, New York and Boulder, Colorado.

Absent from the announcement: any expansion into Fairfax County.

It is unclear how much the selection of Arlington for half of Amazon’s “HQ2,” and the demand for technical talent in the area that will bring, might have affected Apple’s decision. It’s also unclear whether the expanded offices in New York and Pittsburgh constitute the “large East Coast outpost” the company was reportedly considering, or if such an office is still in play given that the company is leaving the door open “for additional expansion elsewhere in the U.S. over time.”

Apple was seriously considering Fairfax County sites in Tysons at the Center for Innovative Technology campus on the Fairfax/Loudoun border. Apple was said to also be seriously considering sites in North Carolina, and the announcement left state leaders there scrambling to explain why they had been passed over.

Apple’s primary Tysons presence remains the Apple Store in Tysons Corner Center mall. Other Northern Virginia Apple stores are located in Reston, Fair Oaks, and Arlington’s Clarendon and Pentagon City neighborhoods.