The groundbreaking ceremony will be held Thursday afternoon.
Data centers don’t employ many people by urban standards – about 175 people people, half of them contractors, work at Google’s existing site in The Dalles – but they can have a significant impact on employment in small towns and rural areas. And even with the tax breaks, data centers are major contributors to the budgets of small cities through utility taxes generated by the facilities’ electricity use.
In The Dalles, for example, those fees account for about 6 percent of the city’s general fund. Google suggested that the new data center could increase that to 10 percent. Google said it expects to hire about 50 more people for the new facility, and hundreds of construction workers will help build it.
(READ MORE: Oregon Live)
