Adobe’s iconic office tower in downtown San Jose officially breaks ground

SAN JOSE — Adobe officially broke ground on a gleaming new office tower in downtown San Jose that will be big enough for 4,000 employees and is expected to be an iconic addition to the skyline of the Bay Area’s largest city.

The 18-story Adobe North Tower will total 700,000 square feet and will be connected to the tech titan’s existing three-building campus in downtown San Jose with a pedestrian bridge that will arc over West San Fernando Street and is expected to be complete sometime in 2022.

“We have been proud to call downtown San Jose our home for the last 25 years,” Adobe Chief Executive Officer Shantanu Narayen said during a groundbreaking ceremony across the street from the busy construction site for the new tower. “I believe the bridge will become an icon. This tower will be our first all-electric building.”

The decision to move the company’s headquarters was made by a group of top execs at Adobe, including co-founder and one-time CEO John Warnock.

“Our first building was 3,000 square feet with a dozen employees,” Warnock recalled during the ceremony. “We moved to Palo Alto for a while. Then we moved back to Mountain View and built a campus that Google now occupies, along with the rest of Mountain View.”

Adobe made the decision to shift the main offices to downtown San Jose as a way to ensure the company’s future growth, working with former mayors Thomas McEnergy and Susan Hammer. Adobe moved its headquarters to downtown San Jose in 1996.

“The city of San Jose was the most welcoming city,” Warnock recalled. “They made it very easy to move to San Jose.”

At present, Adobe has roughly 3,500 employees in downtown San Jose, said Scott Ekman, Adobe’s senior director of global real estate.

“I am thrilled to be here as Adobe doubles down on the downtown,” San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said during the groundbreaking ceremonies. “The next important evolution of Adobe will happen right here in downtown San Jose.”