Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) are building facilities and data centers in a small, old- fashioned town called Prineville, Oregon. Bloomberg’s Willem Marx visited the land to find out the how residents of the town are welcoming Silicon Valley’s large and high technology back offices. Prineville’s Mayor, Betty Roppe sees the advancement as a hope for developments in the town.
Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) had opened one of its data centers in Central Oregon in 2011 and the facility is today its most efficient one in the entire world. A data center is the ultimate facility responsible for everything related to the social network that goes on in the world. All the photos, videos and updates that users update on the website everyday are stored on servers in vast buildings called data centers.
Ideal Location
The power requirements and electric bills to operate such huge facilities can be enormous. But the weather conditions in the desert location, which offers extreme dry air to cool the servers, helps the companies cut down expenses. Air that enters the ‘pentals’, or the air intake rooms, of the data center is fit to be supplied to the servers for cooling them in cold days. And on summer days, “the warm outside air is forced through the giant damp membranes to cool it before it’s circulated.”
“Prineville has become the new spook in the information super- highway.” After Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has also approached the town building a 338,000 square feet facility just off the road from Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB)’s data center. With such big campaigns moving to Prineville, the residents of the desert are ‘shocked’, as also filled with hopes for development.
A Welcoming Host
Prineville has turned out to be a great host for Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) as it offered them both a big incentive. Roppe said, “We told them that we could give them 15 years of tax free on the improvements that they put on the land.” She said that when the two become taxable entities in 15 years, they will not only be paying taxes on the land, but also on the huge facilities that the two would have had set up by then. The tax revenues may hence run into millions of dollars in the town which is still in need for a boost. Prineville is on the roads of revitalization, while serving as an example for other small towns.
