UPDATE: ‘Project Mountain’ Data Farm Represents $140 Million Investment

Updated at 9 a.m

An as-yet-unnamed data center that West Des Moines officials say is bigger than Wells Fargo & Co.’s presence in the city would represent a $140 million investment and bring three dozen jobs to town.

Though the firm behind the project dubbed “Project Mountain” remains confidential, city economic development director Clyde Evans said, “it is certainly somebody people are aware of,” the Des Moines Register reported.

Evans said city and company officials have been in talks for more than a year and more details about the project should be available next week.

The West Des Moines City Council on Monday approved the company’s application for a High Quality Jobs grant through the Iowa Economic Development Authority, which will discuss the application at its June 20 meeting.

Facebook received a grant for up to $18 million in tax benefits in April.

The Facebook project at Altoona, Google’s investment in Council Bluffs and an already existing West Des Moines Microsoft data farm show a clustering effect, said IEDA spokeswoman Tina Hoffman.

“People say, ‘If it was good enough for them, we should look at that, too,’ “ Hoffman told the newspaper.

Local incentives are expected to be similar to those provided to Microsoft, Wells Fargo and Aviva, Mayor Steve Gaer said.

“These are big numbers,” he said. “It’s a huge project.”

Earlier, Patch reported:

The West Des Moines City Council will consider about $8 million in property tax rebates for a proposed data center dubbed Project Mountain when it meets at 5:30 p.m. today. The project would create 36 permanent jobs.

The Des Moines Business Record is reporting that the project would receive nearly $2.4 million in rebates after agreeing to a minimum property assessment of $40 million for the first phase of development. A second $6 million investment would result in an agreed-upon assessment of $100 million, the newspaper said.

The name of the company has not been disclosed.

Data farms are considered an “economic development holy grail,” John Boyd, a New Jersey consultant who helps technology companies find sites for data centers, told USA Today. Iowa recently lured two Facebook and Google, which join Microsoft in West Des Moines, which built a $500 data farm in 2010.

Iowa’s inexpensive, reliable energy, its high-speed fiber infrastructure, relatively low risk for natural disasters, availability of land and legislative incentives all make Iowa an attractive place for data farms.

Legislative incentives include a provision approved in 2007, a year before Microsoft announced it would build a data center in West Des Moines, the Legislature agreed to provide sales and use tax exemptions on the purchases of computer hardware and utilities necessary to run the data centers.

Other reports say that Iowa’s No. 3 ranking in the generation of wind energy give the state an edge.

“It surely made some difference” in Facebook’s decision to build a $300 million data farm in another Des Moines suburb, Debi Durham, the director of the Iowa Economic Development Authority, told the Omaha World-Herald. Facebook’s goal was to obtain 25 percent of necessary to run the data center from renewable sources.

The Business Record said the unidentified company behind Project Mountain is also seeking investment and sales tax credits under the state’s High Quality Jobs Creation program.

Also, the company would not receive the property tax rebates until after the city retires bonds necessary to provide infrastructure improvements.

Incentives for the Microsoft project included a $500,000 grant to the city from the Iowa Economic Development Authority in 2010.

The council meeting starts at 5:30 p.m. Read the agenda.