One hundred forty years ago, Leland Stanford bought 650 acres of the former Rancho San Francisquito as a country estate and a place to breed horses. The Farm, as it’s still known, has been Stanford University’s home since its founding in 1885, and that acreage next to Palo Alto has seemed like room enough for its red-tile roofs and sandstone buildings. Until now.

This fall, the university plans to start construction on its largest expansion outside of its home campus, as the Farm outgrows its bucolic roots.

The $568 million project on the outskirts of Redwood City will create office space for 2,400 university employees. Some buildings currently at the 35-acre site, which once contained the dot-com-era offices of ExciteAtHome, an Internet portal worth $35 billion in its heyday, will be torn down. In their place will rise ones made of limestone, the university’s favored material of late, with splashes of the familiar red on the roofs. A gym with a pool, cafes and a small park will also be part of the site.

“What we’re really trying to create is a feeling of Stanford,” said Steve Elliott, the university’s managing director of development, as he walked past the tan buildings where hundreds of ExciteAtHome engineers once worked.

Before the Internet company filed for bankruptcy in 2001, it had epitomized the dot-com era of rash spending and showmanship, with employees even using a red slide — which is still in existence — to scoot between floors. Some of the buildings, including the one with the slide, are occupied by other tenants, who will move elsewhere on the Redwood City site when Stanford begins construction.

Stanford’s expansion has been in the works since 2004, when the university began looking for property that could accommodate its growing staff. Officials considered properties within roughly a 10-mile radius of campus, including Mountain View, before zeroing in on Redwood City. Palo Alto lacked sufficient space for Stanford’s plans, Elliott said. So the university spent $88 million in 2005 and 2008 to buy the Redwood City land near where the separately run Stanford Health Care system was also planning new facilities.

“At that time, there weren’t that many options, but Redwood City was perfect,” Elliott said. “It was close, (and) we really like the downtown area. It’s just convenient for a lot of our employees.”

The office park is expected to open in 2019, providing a home for the administrative staffs of departments including the Graduate School of Business, the School of Medicine and human resources. Currently, some employees are scattered across rented space in Palo Alto, where average office rental rates are $80.97 per square foot, according to CoStar, which tracks real estate data.

With the new offices, Stanford can bring those employees together and save over the long term by not continually renting, Elliott said.

After the construction is completed, Stanford is expected to become one of Redwood City’s largest employers, alongside the software giant Oracle, which had 6,750 employees in the city last year, and video game maker Electronic Arts.

“It’s a really great opportunity for Redwood City,” said Catherine Ralston, the city’s economic development manager. “It’s going to bring lots of jobs to the area.”

The city approved Stanford’s plans for the property in 2013. In return, Stanford agreed to provide more than $15 million in “public benefits” such as giving the city money to build bike lanes, providing a business boot camp for Redwood City residents and offering a free series featuring speakers from the Graduate School of Business. The speaker series, which has already begun, has attracted 1,000 people on average, said Redwood City Councilman Jeff Gee.

Stanford will also provide a free shuttle for its employees and members of the public from the Redwood City Caltrain station to the offices.

Part of the reason the project did not get going more quickly was the recession that began in 2007. The university had layoffs and budget issues, causing it to delay its plans. Now, the Redwood City project is expected to generate hundreds of construction jobs.

New homes aren’t a component of the Stanford complex, as they are in some other big Bay Area developments. A Stanford survey showed that 8 percent of its employees live in or near Redwood City, according to Gee.

“It’s a good choice to bring jobs closer to where people live,” he said.

But some residents fear that more people will move nearby, testing the housing market further and leading to higher rents. The Redwood City Council considered and rejected allowing housing on the site.

Erica Dubon says she pays $1,450 a month for her small Redwood City apartment, a steep price for her family after her landlord raised the rate a year ago. The homemaker lives there with her three children and husband who works in landscaping. Dubon said she has considered moving out of Redwood City, but “everywhere is expensive.”

Rents keep rising “every time Google comes in here,” said Dubon, referring to the growth of tech firms in Silicon Valley that has brought high-paying jobs to the area.

Elliott said he doesn’t think the development will cause an influx of residents to Redwood City because of its proximity to the main campus. But he agrees with Dubon’s sentiment that housing and affordability are important issues. Stanford plans to contribute to Redwood City’s affordable housing fund, he said.

No date has been set for the groundbreaking, but Stanford anticipates it will happen sometime this fall. The first phase of the construction, expected to be completed in 2019, will include four office buildings, a parking garage, a gym, a child care center, cafes, a dining area and a utility plant. In the future, Stanford plans to build more offices, and perhaps one day “research of some kind” might happen there, Elliott said.

The Redwood City complex is the university’s biggest construction project in terms of size and investment, not counting the Stanford Hospital projects under construction in Palo Alto, he said.

Stanford said it looked at other Bay Area office parks, like those of VMWare and Electronic Arts, and officials went to the Nike headquarters in Oregon for ideas on the expansion. They also consulted with Yale University, because just as Stanford is converting old ExciteAtHome buildings, Yale’s west campus used to be a 136-acre Bayer Pharmaceutical center and is now home to research facilities and administrative offices.

Stanford hasn’t settled on all the details of its Redwood City development. Elliott doesn’t know the location of his office, or the type of food that each dining establishment will serve. Also up in the air is the fate of the ExciteAtHome slide.

“It was part of the dot-com culture,” Elliott said. “Something will happen with that slide. I just don’t know.”

Wendy Lee is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: wlee@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @thewendylee