At least we’re not North Carolina
January 20, 2007
The North Carolina economic development people make their San Antonio counterparts look brilliant by comparison.
I read about it on ValleyWag: Google is going to build a $600 million data center in Lenoir, North Carolina. WRAL reports that Google will receive $100 million in tax benefits over the next 30 years. That’s $500K for each of the 200 jobs that the data center is expected to create.
WRAL says North Carolina was going up against South Carolina for the Google project. Does that mean the rumored $750 million investment by “Maguro Enterprises” near the South Carolina coast isn’t related to Google? Or has the “high tech development project that needs access to lots of electricity” been shelved?
By the way, as a point of comparison, Rich Miller over at Data Center Knowledge says Microsoft’s tax abatement deal from San Antonio totals only $20.7 million. Microsoft plans to invest at least $550 million in the 470,000 square foot data center project; the facility is expected to create 75 jobs.
That’s still over a quarter of million dollars per job for San Antonio. And spare me the argument that we will develop “supplier” job similar to what is expected with Toyota. Do you really think Microsoft needs its servers manufactured locally?
As for the predicted increase in tax revenue expected to be generated, isn’t that going to be needed to fund demands that the data center will ultimately place on the city’s infrastructure? Then there is the fact that the 75 jobs is a “conservative” estimate. Go ahead and double it and what do you get? The whole point of data centers is that they can be managed remotely. All the “add-on” value remains in Redmond, Washington.
When will we start spending money on developing our own resources? It seems that San Antonio companies success despite the city.
E-Commerce News: Servers: Rackspace: A Study in Fanatical Customer Support
“We have remained true to that specialized offering, which has helped us to maintain profitability since February 2001,” Rackspace CTO John Engates told TechNewsWorld. “As a result, we are the fastest-growing managed hosting specialist in the world.”
Engates pegged that growth at 60 percent annually.
The firm has been steadily increasing the number of workers it hires to service an expanding customer base. Rackspace does not purchase other companies and absorb those workers, Engates said.
Technorati Tags: Microsoft, data center, San Antonio, Microsoft data center, Rackspace, North Carolina, Google, tax abatements, economic incentives
Posted in Econmic Incentives, Microsoft, San Antonio, data center, tax abatement
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March 7th, 2007 at 4:43 pm
[...] Anyone else ever hear about CityNAP? This is an internet company that started last summer here in San Antonio. From the picture on it’s website I would guess it has only seven employees. But if the going rate for economic incentives for high tech jobs is a quarter of a million dollars, then CityNAP is worth at least a million and a half from the city. [...]