Facebook picks small Oregon town for first data centre

Groundbreaking ceremony for Facebook's data centre.

Karen Mullins

PRINEVILLE, Oregon – A small city in central Oregon will be the home of Facebook’s first data centre.

The city of Prineville, population around 9,000, offerered tax incentives to the social media giant to lure it to locate there. In return, Facebook has offered to create job in a location where unemployment has run as high as 18 per cent.

Townspeople are thrilled, and hundreds have joined a group on Facebook that offers updates on the centre’s groundbreaking and construction.

Sandy Farley, a local resident, said: “I’m so proud to be a resident of Crook County and live near Prineville!!! It is a great small town that has a lot to offer, we gone thru some hard times in the past two years – unemployment that runs 18 per cent right now. No one here wants to see it bloom like Bend and Redmond did, however we welcome Facebook Data Center with open arms!!!”

During the construction phase about 200 people will be needed for the two years it will take to build the center. The office is expected to be ready for business in two years requiring about 35 regular full-time employees.

“Having a growing, international company like Facebook locate part of its operations in Prineville is a great boost to our local economy and general morale,” Judy Bannon, a broker with Coldwell Banker Realty said in a press release.

Go here to see the Facebook page

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Posted by Karen J. Mullins on Jan 24 2010. Filed under Sci-Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry