Dive Brief:
- Facebook announced Thursday that it will invest an additional $750 million into its data center facility in Prineville, Oregon — increasing the company's footprint there to 3.2 million square feet. According to The Oregonian, this brings Facebook's total investment in its Prineville data center complex to $2 billion.
- The project will include construction of an additional campus with two new buildings, which Facebook said will likely use renewable energy sources. In addition, the company recently announced that its first five buildings at the Prineville location will be 100% powered by solar energy.
- The Prineville data centers currently qualify Facebook for about $20 million a year in property tax exemptions, and that amount is expected to grow along with the company's expansions. According to The Oregonian, Facebook and other tech companies like Intel and Apple have established their data centers in Oregon because the state routinely offers substantial tax breaks. This latest project should be complete by mid-2020. DPR Construction participated in previous construction at the Prineville site, but Facebook did not include contractor information in its announcement last week.
Dive Insight:
As some other construction segments show a reduction in the pace of growth, data centers and other tech-based projects are driving a significant amount of building activity these days, according to the Marcum Commercial Construction Index second quarter report. This is good news not only for construction companies like DPR that specialize in data center construction but also for general contractors that take part in building out corporate campuses.
Perhaps the most anticipated project at present is the second North American headquarters for Amazon. Campus construction in total is estimated to cost $5 billion, although the tech giant has not yet announced the project's host city. The tech giant announced the 20 finalist cities/regions for its HQ2 project a year ago, but it's still anybody's guess as to which entry is closest to winning.
However, Amazon is just one of the tech enterprises driving activity in the sector. Google is planning to double the footprint of its Seattle campus, and Apple just completed a $2 billion, 1.2-million-square-foot construction and renovation project in Mesa, Arizona.
