The 328 acre site of a proposed high-tech data center in the Eastern Iowa Industrial Center. CREDIT CITY OF DAVENPORT
The Davenport City Council is expected Wednesday to support a State of Iowa grant application for an $800 million high-tech data center construction project that could have a more than $1 billion economic impact on the region. The Davenport site is part of an ongoing national and Midwest site selection process being conducted by Vemerald, […]
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The Davenport City Council is expected Wednesday to support a State of Iowa grant application for an $800 million high-tech data center construction project that could have a more than $1 billion economic impact on the region.The Davenport site is part of an ongoing national and Midwest site selection process being conducted by Vemerald, LLC. So competition for the new data center’s location is likely, city leaders say. That firm also may be working on behalf of an unnamed parent company.If it is approved on Wednesday, May 8, the council also will endorse a property tax exemption incentive for the project proposed for the northwest corner of Hillandale Road and Enterprise Way. That formal Resolution of Support, which would then be signed by Davenport Mayor Mike Matson, is required by the Iowa Economic Development Association (IEDA) in order for the project to be eligible for Iowa’s High Quality Jobs Program.
If the Davenport Council gives its OK, Vemerald said it would move to have the Davenport center’s grant application added to the IEDA’s Friday, May 17, agenda, according to Bruce Berger, Davenport’s director of community and economic development.Â
Two data halls planned
In all, the center under consideration would feature construction of two data halls and ancillary buildings totaling 715,000 square feet. The buildings on the data center campus would be used for the remote storage, processing, and distribution of large amounts of data.Iowa’s High Quality Jobs Program allows communities to incentivize business development by providing a property tax exemption to qualifying businesses that have a minimum investment of at least $10 million and create at least 31 jobs that meet/exceed county wage rates and benefits. The proposed Iowa data center would significantly exceed those minimum requirements. In addition, the economic payoff from the city’s investment in the project would be significant, according to data from the IEDA and an analysis completed by Bi-State Regional Commission. Mr. Berger said their analysis indicated that the construction project alone would generate an economic impact of more than $1 billion in the region, and operationally, an annual economic impact of $78.6 million is projected.
$5.3M in new taxes possible
The new data center also would bring the estimated assessed value of the EICC location – which now stands at $958,000 – to $420 million. In addition, under this plan, the City of Davenport would benefit from retaining the remaining 40% of property taxes on the completed facility. For example, it’s expected to generate $5.3 million each year in property taxes for Davenport and a total of $107 million over 20 years. Broken down further, the annual estimated property tax generated that will go to local taxing districts would include $2.5 million for the city, $900,000 for Scott County and $1.7 million for Davenport schools.If the Davenport EIIC site is selected and built, it will join about a dozen data centers operating in Iowa by companies including Lumen, DC Mining, Good, Mircost and Meta. Others may be in the works.Recently, for example, Google was identified as the company developing a $576 million monumental data center project in southwest Cedar Rapids. It’s likely to become the largest economic development project in the city’s history.Closer to home in the Quad Cities, if a new Davenport center is built it will join Davenport’s existing Bluebird Data Centers, according to Datacenters.com.
