Tax breaks aren’t free. In exchange for $89 millions of dollars in tax incentive, Apple is planning to build a $1 billion data center in Reno, Nevada, in order to house its various online services, including iCloud, iTunes, and its App Store. The news was first reported by the Reno Gazette-Journal.
In response to rising Internet traffic as well as demand for its products, the company recently built a similar data center in Maiden, North Carolina, and is currently constructing another in Pineville, Oregon.
Apple already has a satellite office open in Reno. The $1 billion investment also includes a purchasing center in the downtown center of Reno.
The data center will be part of a larger technology park outside the city. The park will also house a renewable energy project, and comprises about 2,200 acres, including 1,000 of which will be dedicated to data centers.
“Certainly (Apple) is a seed to the Tessera project itself and a seed maybe for a larger Apple presence,” Steve Polikalas, one of the principle developers behind the project, told the Reno Gazette-Journal. “But even if it facilitates the Tessera project, which it will, it should we expect, it’s just absolutely exciting and transformative.”
The news had long been kept a secret, a common strategy of Apple.
“We hope to build Apple’s next data center in Reno to support Apple’s iTunes Store, App Store and incredibly popular iCloud services,” Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet said in a statement first circulated by AllThingsD. “If approved, this project would expand our presence in Nevada and create hundreds of construction jobs over the next year, plus permanent jobs at the data center which will add to our existing total of nearly 400 employees in the state.”