Forest City, N.C., was once known as Burnt Chimney. But smokestacks are definitely a thing of the past, thanks to the social media giant Facebook, which is investing another $200 million to expand its data center campus there with a third, 480,000-sf building.
Construction reportedly is underway in Forest City, which lies between Asheville, N.C., and Greenville, S.C.
In a blog he posted on Facebook, Keven McCammon, the data center’s site manager, said that construction would add to a project that already has created “thousands of jobs in the regional economy and millions of dollars in economic impact.”
There’s no question that Facebook’s presence has been a boon to Forest City and its 7,400 local residents. The company invested $450 million into the first two buildings that each span 300,000 sf. RTI International, a firm Facebook retained to measure its economic impact, found that between 2011 and 2013 the data center had generated a total gross economic impact of $707 million and supported 5,000 jobs in North Carolina.
And since 2011, Facebook has awarded an estimated $575,000 to schools and qualified nonprofits in Rutherford County, where Forest City is located. Facebook recently agreed to support a pilot program to provide free WiFi access to 75 to 100 students in the local school district.
Office space at Facebook's data center in Forest City.
Facebook, along with other tech companies, has favored North Carolina for its data center because of the state’s low-cost, reliable and available power, relatively inexpensive land, available water (at Forest City, Facebook is deploying evaporative cooling, which requires mist spray to cool the air as it enters the facility), proximity to East Coast customers, and generous tax incentives.
In June, Facebook announced plans to build a third data center on its campus in Altoona, Iowa, where its first data center there was already operational and a second was under construction. One month later, it broke ground on construction of a data center in Fort Worth, Texas, for which the company will invest $500 million in three 250,000-sf buildings. That data center, when it opens next year, will be powered entirely by wind power.
Facebook was the recipient of a $146.7 million incentive package from Fort Worth to locate its data center there. The Associated Press reports that state governments across the country over the past decade have extended nearly $1.5 billion in tax incentives to hundreds of data center projects initiated by various tech companies.
Facebook also has data centers in Pineville, Ore., and Lulea, Sweden.
Related Stories
| Oct 2, 2013
Corporate HQ in 10 months made possible with BIM coordination
An integrated Building Team uses BIM/VDC to convert a 1940s-era industrial building into a flashy new headquarters for Hillshire Brands in a matter of months.
| Sep 26, 2013
Mobilizing your job site to achieve a paperless project: fact or fiction?
True mobility in the field has rapidly evolved from lock-box kiosks on each floor to laptops on rolling carts to tablets and iPads loaded with drawings sets stored in the cloud. And WiFi-ready job sites have gone from “nice to have” to “must have” status in just a little over a year.
| Sep 4, 2013
Augmented reality: 12 applications for design and construction professionals
Building Design+Construction reached out to AEC professionals who have studied and applied augmented reality and asked them to pinpoint applications that are ripe for the technology. Here’s what they had to offer.
| Sep 4, 2013
Augmented reality goes mainstream: 12 applications for design and construction firms
Thanks to inexpensive mobile devices and increasingly advanced software apps, Building Teams are finally able to bring their BIM models to life on the job site.
| Sep 4, 2013
Smart building technology: Talking results at the BUILDINGChicago/ Greening the Heartland show
Recent advancements in technology are allowing owners to connect with facilities as never before, leveraging existing automation systems to achieve cost-effective energy improvements. This BUILDINGChicago presentation will feature Procter & Gamble’s smart building management program.
| Aug 8, 2013
Level of Development: Will a new standard bring clarity to BIM model detail?
The newly released LOD Specification document allows Building Teams to understand exactly what’s in the BIM model they’re being handed.
| Jul 19, 2013
Top BIM Construction Firms [2013 Giants 300 Report]
Turner, Clark Group, DPR top Building Design+Construction's 2013 ranking of the contractors and construction management firms with the most revenue from BIM-driven projects.
| Jul 19, 2013
Top BIM Engineering Firms [2013 Giants 300 Report]
Jacobs, URS, SAIC top Building Design+Construction's 2013 ranking of the engineering and engineering/architecture firms with the most revenue from BIM-driven projects.
| Jul 19, 2013
Top BIM Architecture Firms [2013 Giants 300 Report]
Gensler, HOK, HDR top Building Design+Construction's 2013 ranking of the architecture and architecture/engineering firms with the most revenue from BIM-driven projects.
| Jul 19, 2013
BIM 2.0: AEC firms share their vision for the great leap forward in BIM/VDC implementation [2013 Giants 300 Report]
We reached out to dozens of AEC firms that made our annual BIM Giants lists and asked one simple question: What does BIM 2.0 look like to you? Here’s what they had to offer.
