Austin Data Center Developer Secures Incentive Package

Prime Data Centers LLC is hoping to build a sprawling data center campus east of Austin that could amount to a total investment of $4 billion. But in exchange, Prime wanted some government economic incentives.

The Austin Business Journal reports the company secured approval for financial incentives from the Caldwell County Commissioners Court that will come in the form of a 10-year, 100% property tax abatement, as well as a payment from the county in-lieu of taxes that’s roughly equal to 40% annually of the taxes that would have been owed. The incentives would be for the $1.3 billion first phase of the planned $4 billion turnkey data center campus.

The 262,000-square-foot buildings in phase 1 will each have 48-megawatt capacity for an unidentified single-user tenant. Each building is valued at roughly $450 million.

Data centers don’t create many long-term jobs, they do add value to a city’s tax rolls because of the large amount of investment at the sites.