Apple has been building its new Oregon data center since October of last year. The new facility will include two 338,000 square-foot data center buildings on 160 acres. That sounds like a lot of land, right?
Apparently 160 acres isn’t going to be enough to complete the data center, so Apple is looking to add an additional 96 acres to this already massive property, as reported by the Central Oregonian. However zoning and other regulatory matters have to be dealt with before the company can move forward with its expansion plans.
The Central Oregonian explains this situation further saying:
Though [assistant planning director for Crook County Phil] Stenbeck declined to identify the company behind Project Pillar by name, it’s plainly Apple.
The property awaiting transfer is covered by the same tax break agreement that Apple now operates under. And Stenbeck said Pillar previously went by the code name Maverick — that’s the name Apple used last year when it paid $5.6 million to buy 160 acres of Crook County land for its first Prineville data center.
Apple is building data centers quite frequently as of late, with the other facility being in North Carolina, which the company claims will be ran on 60 percent renewable energy. This Oregon center will supposedly run on 100 percent renewable energy. Building these huge data centers shows how serious the company has become with expanding its iCloud services. The more people that own iPhones, the more personal data Apple will be responsible for. There is big push for all of us to put are things into the cloud.