"Just 65 miles south of Denver, Colorado resides the city of Colorado Springs. As the second largest city in Colorado and the most populous city in El Paso County, it is home to many notable military installations including the United States Air Force Academy, The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), Fort Carson Army Base, and Peterson Air Force Base. The United States Olympic Training Center is also located in Colorado Springs along with many religious institutions including Focus on the Family. In addition to these, it was recently announced that Colorado Springs will now house Walmart’s enormous new data center.
Walmart chose Colorado Springs as the site for its new data center due to the incentives the local government offered including $4.5 million in rebates on their sales and business personal property tax. The trade off for the city is the estimated $488 million the data center will bring to the local economy over the next 15 years.
Not only did the large rebates come into play in Walmart’s decision, but also the fact that Colorado Springs has plenty of land to house such a major data center project. In 2011, Walmart purchased 24 acres in Northern Colorado Springs for $5.3 million and plans to build a 210,000 square-foot corporate data center on the property. The data center will employ 30 people and will cost an estimated $100 million to build, along with another $50 to $100 million invested in machinery alone.
Due to its low-cost and reliable electricity, educated workforce, and practically natural disaster-free location, Colorado Springs can expect much growth in the future where data centers are concerned. In addition to Walmart’s Colorado Springs data center, Progressive Insurance, FedEx and Hewlett-Packard also have data centers located in the area. The city is quickly becoming a hot spot for data center seekers everywhere and other sites have been proposed for future data centers."
