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Posts tagged: Grant County

Amway plans huge production facility in Port of Quincy, adding 30 jobs

April 2, 2012 1:56 p.m. • 0 comments

The Port of Quincy has sold 12 acres in its industrial park to Amway, the giant direct-sales company that distributes thousands of household products.

The company, based in Grand Rapids, Mich., plans to build a 48,000-square-foot extraction and concentration facility to process ingredients for nutritional products sold under the Nutrilite brand.

The company has an option to buy an additional 15 acres of property at the same industrial park.

Amway said it hopes to start the $31.8 million project later this year. It will create 30 manufacturing and quality assurance jobs, as well as 100 or more temporary construction jobs.

The Amway plant should start production in 2014.

Port officials said the decision is another affirmation of Grant County's and the port district's coordinated efforts to use high-end infrastructure, such as broadband, and transportation advantages to market itself as a world-class industrial site.

The port has several other major clients, including Microsoft and Yahoo, both of which have large data centers on land managed through the port.

Commerce Dept. gives $3 million wastewater grant to Quincy for growth

Sept. 21, 2011 1:35 p.m. • 0 comments

Quincy continues using its data-center cluster as a way to increase its economic profile.

The acting U.S. Commerce Secretary, Rebecca Blank, announced on Wednesday that Quincy has been given a $3 million Economic Development Administration (EDA) grant to build a reverse osmosis treatment plant and related infrastructure that will support the region’s data processing industry.

The grant will increase the city’s water capacity and allow for continued expansion of nearby tech businesses who have or might in the future build data centers there.

The grant will help the community treat industrial and domestic wastweater to cool the Quincy data centers. The added capacity will also help area food processing and shipping businesses, according to an EDA press release.

Let's recap the companies using Grant County for affordable energy: Microsoft, Yahoo, Sabey, Intuit and Dell, so far.

Quincy Microsoft server farm lands at No. 9 on largest data center list

Posted by Tom

May 4, 2010 11:32 a.m. • 0 comments

Website datacenterknowledge.com recently listed the 10 largest data centers in the world. Landing at No. 9 is the Microsoft Data Center in Quincy, in the heart of Grant County. Officially, the website made Quincy 9A, with Microsoft’s San Antonio data center 9B.

The photo above shows the Quincy site. Until two years ago, Microsoft planned to build a second adjoining center. For reasons involving state taxes, it stopped and moved more of its data to Texas.

Both San Antonio and Quincy measure about 470,000 square feet. To view a video showing the inside of the Quincy site, it’s here.

Is Washington’s data center tax break too late?

Posted by Tom

March 29, 2010 12:44 p.m. • 0 comments

Washington state leaders feel they’re back in the data center game.

Last week Gov. Chris Gregoire signed a bill that could help data centers expand or set up shop in Washington rural counties. The law allows tax breaks for data centers in any county other than Spokane, King, Pierce, Snohomish, Clark and Thurston.

Though Washington is facing massive budget deficits, state leaders were clearly warned that without a bill that cut sales taxes on new data center equipment, the future of expansion by Yahoo, Microsoft and other tech firms was minimal.

From 2006 until 2008, Microsoft, Intuit and Yahoo all built large data centers in Grant County, using the Port of Quincy’s low power rates and redundant fiber connectivity to justify the investment.

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