WEST DES MOINES, Iowa — On Wednesday, WHO 13 reported on Microsoft’s expansion into Van Meter. The article sparked many social media comments and viewer questions. Details of Van Meter’s sale to the tech giant have not been made public, but the West Des Moines data center could shed some light on what kind of impact it will have on the regions where those centers are built.
Many questions revolved around what commercial property taxes would be, potential tax exemptions, and a review of van meter infrastructure. While it’s not an exact comparison, there are five Microsoft data centers in the region, with a sixth on the way. Finance Director Tim Stiles was able to reveal the total amount of West Des Moines’ upfront financial incentives and property taxes paid by the center.
“Three of the five centers were required to provide upfront financial incentives, and the total for all three was approximately $18 million between the three transactions. “It seems like a good investment compared to the fact that we’re paying $30 million a year for this,” Stiles said. “Additionally, we built all of that infrastructure with revenue from their taxes. So the city is expanding more rapidly with infrastructure that we could not have built in years.” I was able to do.”
Stiles also said the center received no tax refunds or abatements and had paid the full amount of property taxes from the beginning.
Other concerns from viewers concerned infrastructure such as water and electricity to maintain large data centers. Stiles said, at least for West Des Moines, MidAmerican Energy has built a single substation at each data center to serve the area.
When it comes to water usage, the industry trend is that many data centers are moving from evaporative cooling to air cooling. WHO 13 has created an additional article on how much water data centers use.
Asked about the amount of jobs these data centers would create, Stiles said West Des Moines’ contract with Microsoft states that each data center employs at least 50 full-time employees, with many He said he was hiring more people than needed.
“I know they’ve been building in West Des Moines since 2010 and it doesn’t look like they’re going to stop. I think there’s 400 to 500 construction jobs,” Stiles said. “Turner Construction, they’re a very large national construction company, moved their offices to the Des Moines metro just to build the data center, because we don’t think that’s going to stop anytime soon.”
Van Meter residents were also concerned about the data center hurting their eyes or the potential light pollution it would cause.
“There are always concerns from neighbors, but fortunately the sites they choose are on the outskirts of the city and in many cases on property that we incorporate into the city,” Stiles said. “But everyone has neighbors. Even if it’s a farmhouse half a mile away, there’s always anxiety because it’s the unknown. We had to resolve a lot of neighborhood issues. Last council meeting The meeting brought people together to discuss the new meeting.”
Overall, Stiles said that for West Des Moines, “Microsoft is an outstanding corporate citizen. I mean, they donate millions of dollars to nonprofits, they donate $800,000 to the amphitheater outside their office here. I can say we are donating more than that.”
Stiles also believes that Microsoft’s move into Van Meter “creates tax space for the city, Dallas County and the Van Meter School District that we’ve probably never seen before.”
