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Rural North Carolina Experiences Data Center Boom
1sockchuck writes "Rural counties in western North Carolina have hit the data center trifecta, landing major projects from Google, Apple and Facebook. These marquee tech companies will invest more than $2 billion in small towns like Forest City, Kings Mountain and Maiden, a town of just 3,300 residents. How did western North Carolina become a tech hub? Aggressive tax incentives and an abundant supply of cheap power, a legacy of the textile mills that once thrived in the region, which narrowly missed winning a $499 million Microsoft data center project that ended up in Virginia."
It's been strange to see this happen. We live right in the center of all this (near Winston-Salem, apple is 45 minutes south, and google is 20 minutes west) and I have to say, these places are not subtle. These places are HUGE. I think the Elkin/Google installation is like 250 acres, which is silly huge. It makes sense, land out here is cheap but you are still 5 hours from DC which in itself is priceless for corporations (the big ones). Add in tax breaks, an evolving biotech industry (like us... we hope!), and lots of geeks near-local (the triangle with IBM/Glaxo/Redhat/Epic Games/Etc. is 2 hours east) and it seems obvious. The nice part for people who live here is that bandwidth is really really good in order to feed all these guys. REALLY good :)
Imagination is the silver lining of Intelligence.
I went to university at Western Carolina University and we typically had 30+ students in the CS program. UNC Asheville has about the same. There are also a number of regional community colleges with degrees in IT. There are plenty of educated people in the area who want to stay around home and work there. I am from New England but went to school there. Back then (1999) there was a huge dearth of IT jobs in the area. If something like this had happened then, I'd probably still be there happily.
Rural life has a lot more to offer than "country music" and "small bars".
Besides, Forest City is a little over an hour from Charlotte-
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=Charlotte,+NC&daddr=Forest+City,+NC&hl=en&geocode=Fc-FGQIdiW4u-ymBGjj8xB9UiDFk0UO_5lBGiA%3BFXsnGwIdcdYe-ymL-Li2eUBXiDEcD-cexdHc0Q&gl=us&mra=ls&sll=35.330812,-81.864624&sspn=3.136834,3.66394&ie=UTF8&z=9
Kings Mountain is a little over 30 minutes frmo Charlotte:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=kings+mountain,+NC&daddr=Charlotte,+NC&hl=en&geocode=FU7MGQId9tQm-yl3b2jZZN1WiDHoaxOciHBonA%3BFc-FGQIdiW4u-ymBGjj8xB9UiDFk0UO_5lBGiA&gl=us&mra=ls&sll=35.289595,-81.602645&sspn=0.784656,0.915985&ie=UTF8&ll=35.256834,-81.088715&spn=0.784971,0.915985&z=10
and Maiden is about an hour away
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=Maiden,+NC&daddr=Charlotte,+NC&hl=en&geocode=FYnXHgIdnc4o-ymH5GR5yzRRiDFUcW6pZdAArw%3BFc-FGQIdiW4u-ymBGjj8xB9UiDFk0UO_5lBGiA&gl=us&mra=ls&sll=35.256834,-81.090088&sspn=0.784971,0.914612&ie=UTF8&z=11
These places are hardly remote and isolated. There will be plenty of people who will be willing to take the jobs offered in these places (and who will appreciate the low cost of living and the proximity to a larger city).