Local public radio KUOW reported that cloud giant Amazon is getting ready to start construction for its seventh data center in Oregon after local officials have approved 15 years of property-tax free operation on the Umatilla County property. The site will be in Hermiston, a small city in Umatilla County.
Amazon’s investment will be over $200 million
There is no sales tax in Oregon, that’s why some of the biggest cloud platforms, such as Amazon Web Services, Facebook, Google, and Apple have turned their eyes to Oregon and have already built huge data centers and campuses there. According to KUOW, AWS already has four data centers in Umatilla, including the one that is recently approved, and three in the Morrow County, which is neighboring the Umatilla.
City and county officials anticipating Amazon’s investment will be over $200 million and also job creation, community fees, and tax payments after a certain amount of time will be beneficial to the city. But, according to the KUOW report, some board members believe that tax break tends to be a waste of money.
It is safe to say that Amazon lowered its infrastructure budget last year. However this year tech giant is much more active when it comes to infrastructure investments. Amazon already launched data centers in Bahrain, announced an $800 million construction project in Argentina and bought 90 acres of land for construction in Virginia.