Apple Building a $250M Data Center in Central Oregon

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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Apple will be following the lead of several other major corporations in locating its newest data center in Prineville, Oregon. Facebook, Amazon, Google and several other mega-corps have located there mainly due to property tax exemptions in the county. The project once completed will create 35 full-time positions.

Apple needs storage capacity for its iCloud service to store customers' photos, music and movies. It has a large data center in North Carolina and is building a 100-acre, 20-megawatt solar array there.
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The fact all these companies have built data centers in that one city should show the other politicians something about job creation.

Lower taxes = more jobs.

more jobs = more taxes

It balances out, and the community flourishes because of it.

Hate Apple, but glad to see that some more people are going to be employed.
 
stiltner said:
The fact all these companies have built data centers in that one city should show the other politicians something about job creation.

Lower taxes = more jobs.

more jobs = more taxes

It balances out, and the community flourishes because of it.

Hate Apple, but glad to see that some more people are going to be employed.
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Golly gee! I'm so happy a whole 35 people will be employed for ONLY $250 million.
 
Magnus said:
Golly gee! I'm so happy a whole 35 people will be employed for ONLY $250 million.
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This ^

Not to mention all those tax exemptions cut into the city, state, and federal government; the average joe will then have to support a portion of the added load on our infrastructure that the building adds.
 
stiltner said:
The fact all these companies have built data centers in that one city should show the other politicians something about job creation.

Lower taxes = more jobs.

more jobs = more taxes

It balances out, and the community flourishes because of it.

Hate Apple, but glad to see that some more people are going to be employed.
Click to expand...

Theres a balance. You cant just keep lowering taxes. At some point you reach a pivot.
 
I always thought it was funny that these huge data centers are in Prineville... I have relatives that live there and that town is literally in the middle of no where.
 
Its cool they are finally trying to compete with companies like google and amazon, but honestly I don't think this center is going to scratch either.
 
A modern datacenter doesn't take many people at all to run. A few facilities people, a handful of people who know something, and that's about it. A lot of the time they don't even have trained monkeys (cable runners, button pushers, etc) as the need is so rare that the work is contracted out when it's needed.
 
Woops, no edit.

The only continuing benefit for a datacenter is really to the utilities. There really is not much incentive for a city to subsidize or give tax breaks for a modern DC.
 
Jewba said:
I always thought it was funny that these huge data centers are in Prineville... I have relatives that live there and that town is literally in the middle of no where.
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Probably because it's less laws and regulation. When a data center was built in a town near where I live (an Atlanta suburb) they had to go to the city council first to request a reduction of parking spaces, because aparantly there was a law that would have forced them to build 206 spaces because it was a 100,000 square foot building.

I would have imagined that right of way for all the fiber would have been a problem too, but luckily there's a ton of dark fiber all over that town from the late 90s, and then you have water and power issues too, not to mention land in the middle of nowhere is a lot cheaper.
 
Not to mention the property tax exemptions! :mad:

We have income tax and property tax to offset the fact we have no sales tax.

Our property taxes SUCK. And every time we grant an exemption to some company... it has to be made up on the backs of the rest of us paying the endless parade of property taxes on our HOMES and BUSINESSES that aren't large enough to bribe our corrupt state officials to allow them to come in tax free.

It's evil. Pure evil.
 
What I wonder is how companies like Google and Apple afford to run these huge data centers for the services they offer. Overall sure, they make lot of money, but does offering those services (which are free) actually somehow make enough money to pay off the monthly cost of the data center? Or do they run it at a loss knowing that it helps promote their paid products which in turn make enough money to cover it? What makes a data center expensive is not so much the power and stuff, it's the bandwidth. Ever get a quote for a T1 or T3 at home for fun? Imagine the connection these centers have and how much those must cost. :eek:

Crazy to think only 35 people will actually be able to run a full data center though. I guess they probably have lot of centralized services like NOC, server techs already so it's only hands on people who will do the physical side of the server work. If they can manage that it sounds like they definitely have an efficient structure. Though there will probably be plenty of contractor jobs created. hvac people, cleaning staff, fire alarm people etc so that will make other companies possibly hire people depending on their size and how busy they are already. So in total it will most likely create more than 35 jobs.
 
Did they get a 30 year tax exemption like they do in NY? If so, then you know what's likely to happen after the exeptions end right? So long, and thanks for all the fish!
 
In order for iCloud to actually become faster and reliable. The data centre would need to be state of the art so Apple can't land themselves in trouble AGAIN
 
flectron said:
In order for iCloud to actually become faster and reliable. The data centre would need to be state of the art so Apple can't land themselves in trouble AGAIN
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trouble with what?

and Red Squirrel: everyone underestimates the revenue these companies get from advertising. Almost every free app has "iAds," which Apple gets a cut of, so all the apps they have to host and serve up, pay for that massive data center through billions of ad-views.
 
Magnus said:
Golly gee! I'm so happy a whole 35 people will be employed for ONLY $250 million.
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eh? I'm sure that 250 million isn't all going to those 35 people... most of it will go into the land, building, supporting infrastructure, and actual servers.
 
I'm just glad I'm reading a report that at least something is being built here that is creating any measure of jobs. Marginal gain is still gain.

If Apple, Microsoft, Google, or Amazon decided to build a facility in the Phillipines, India, HK, or anywhere else instead of the US I don't think folks would be rationalizing that it's "only" 35 jobs at $250M at that point. I would imagine folks would be angry that those jobs were not created in the US and still demonizing them.
 
20MW solar array in Oregon? MAYBE get 10MW on a sunny day that far north.. average will likely be in the sub 8MW category for daytime.
 
Brantoc said:
20MW solar array in Oregon? MAYBE get 10MW on a sunny day that far north.. average will likely be in the sub 8MW category for daytime.
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I'm sure the engineers that get paid much more than you do to think about these things, thought of that and compensated ;)
 
Magnus said:
Golly gee! I'm so happy a whole 35 people will be employed for ONLY $250 million.
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how is the total cost to apple relevant, in any way, to how many jobs are created? 35 jobs were created where there could have been 0 jobs created. these are long-term sustainable jobs, unlike jobs created by the government. it's a friggin data center, they're expensive and don't require much human interaction. how many jobs do you expect to be created?
 
$250 Million dollars and it only generates 35 jobs...


Cloud computing , the new fad that will take yer jobs :(
 
lilbabycat said:
This ^

Not to mention all those tax exemptions cut into the city, state, and federal government; the average joe will then have to support a portion of the added load on our infrastructure that the building adds.
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what infrastructure loads? I don't think a building with 35 people in it will put a large load on police/fire/roads... it will use tons of electricity but pretty sure you have to pay for that ;)
 
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