[NewsPoster]

A local community newspaper has reported that Apple has closed a deal on an additional 200 acres of land in Prineville, Oregon, adjacent to the company's existing data center. The sale was completed for $3.6 million, according to Crook County Judge Michael McCabe, who is also chairman of the county commission. The county sold the tract to Apple, which back in April filed an application that declared its intention to expand the Prineville facility.

While McCabe did not specifically link the land sale to the still-pending expansion application, saying Apple "has not shared" its plans for the new land, the iPhone maker is almost certain to use the purchase for future expansion of either the data center itself or additional renewable-resource energy facilites, or both. According to the April application, Apple wants to build two more "pods" (the structures that house the server farms) -- with estimates of $5.88 million in new construction, with another $638,000 for "interior work."

The application, if approved would represent a doubling of the current Prineville facility, which was begun in 2012 on 159 acres of land. Apple will also likely apply to extend its enterprise-zone tax abatements to the new land, further indicating that it intends to expand its data center. The tax deal, which runs for 15 years, trades an exemption on certain taxes in exchange for a guarantee of a specific number of jobs that pay above the county median wage.

These sorts of agreements have made Crook County, a generally poor area relative to larger cities in Oregon, attractive to tech companies. Facebook recently announced plans to build a third data center in the county, larger than its two existing centers, and has entered into an informal agreement with Apple to give local residents some preference in hiring for certain jobs in the facilities. For its part, Apple agreed to create 35 well-paying permanent jobs in its present facility, not including the much more numerous but temporary construction jobs involved in creating the centers.

[iphonerulez]

What's Apple going to do with all that data center capacity? Will it be strictly for growth or additional services? Apple should at least keep up with peer companies in storage capacity even if it's not immediately using it. It's funny, though. Apple can afford to do everything bigger and better than all of its rivals but chooses not to. Maybe it's simply not efficient to work that way. Facebook is building all those data centers and Facebook is making just a fraction of the income Apple is making.

[chimaera]

Facebook recently announced plans to build a third data center in the county, larger than its two existing centers, and has entered into an informal agreement with Apple to give local residents some preference in hiring for certain jobs in the facilities.

Facebook agreed with Apple to hire more local residents? That sounds really odd - perhaps Facebook made the agreement with the county instead?

[quebit]

@iPhonerulez

FaceBook has more reliance on data centres than Apple does .... though I do agree, that Apple should be much more aggressive in their cloud initiatives and online services. I'm hoping all of these moves are in that direction.

Is it just me, or there are too many "ironic" and funny sounding things going on here? The name of the county is "Crook" ??? really?? They couldn't come up with a better name? And the chairman of the county is also the judge ??? Isn't that a conflict of interest? Something's wrong here ....

[mindwaves]

I sure would like to own the land around that data center, just in case Apple or any other big company decides to expand.

[Mike Wuerthele]

Quebit, nope, really Crook county. Jordan, one of our staffers is actually living there. Moved there well before the data centers arrived.