Plans are advancing for the construction of a $600 million data center in southern Arizona that will belong to online search engine giant Google.
The company, which is based in Mountain View, California, has announced that it wants to build the facility in Mesa in order to enhance its artificial intelligence and cloud business computing offerings.
The facility, remarked Joe Kava, vice president of data centers for Google, will be designed to keep “digital services up and running for people and businesses,” adding that such centers “are the economic anchors in the communities where we operate.”
The new project represents the first time that Google has had an actual physical facility in the Grand Canyon State. Upon completion, the new data center will be able to provide cloud technologies in metro Phoenix for both private businesses as well as public sector entities.
Google in recent months has been building out its national data center presence. Last month it announced a facility investment of $1.7 billion to support already-existing data center campuses in Columbus, Lancaster, and New Albany, Ohio.
Several weeks before the Ohio announcement, the company revealed plans to enhance to the tune of $350 million its Council Bluffs, Iowa, data center.
The new Mesa facility will be designed to limit water usage, always a big issue in Arizona. A Google press release said the facility will employ air-cooled technology in an effort to minimize “net climate impact,” while “using natural resources responsibly, both today and in the future.”
The company has additionally said that it will donate $150,000 to the utility Salt River Project in support of the company’s plan to restore hundreds of ponderosa pines destroyed by the 37-acre Dude Fire near the city of Payson in 1990.
By Garry Boulard
