Post 5 – Summing Up
You know, as a Page County taxpayer, I have only brought the topic up because I genuinely want to see us prosper and grow – and I honestly want for our Board of Supervisors to be successful. I hope these posts provide them with some additional data they can use as they consider next steps for the County and EDA.
I mentioned some preliminary concerns in my first post, when I said that it is hard to believe that anyone is entertaining the concept of building one of these high risk, high cost facilities in Page County. The industry just changes so fast, and technology has changed this much since the idea first came up…this just seems to be a case where the due diligence has to be thorough and accurate.
Why would a lender give EDA, Premier Technical Services, or anyone else a $20+ million construction loan for a data center facility, especially if the borrower has never built, operated, or perhaps even worked in one?
- and especially to build one on speculation, in a location where the infrastructure has not yet even been extended to support this kind of technical facility.
I am not sure where the financing for such a facility would come from today’s financial market – unless there are signed contracts with tenants for the space. Especially when well financed – self financed – professionals like Digital and Terremark are already swarming the market with competing, up-to-date modular solutions, already built or under construction, that won’t go obsolete as new generation technology comes on line.
In conclusion, it seems like the County is just stretched so thin in so many ways, I don’t think Page County is ready to swing for the fences in the data center industry. It is hard to imagine that such a high risk, high cost idea is the one that is going to save our bacon. There are many low risk, low cost goals and objectives in the EDA Strategic Plan that are being ignored because of the data center hoopla.
Why not pick a few of these and go for some solid base hits?
1 comment:
Reposting my caveat on these posts:
I understand that the EDA's role is courting and attracting business to Page County. However, a lot of people are appearing in the PNC making statements about the data center - very few of them associated with PTS, the company who announced they wanted to build it in the first place. The letters I am referrring to are the recent ones by Dave McClure and Bill Shuler, where it's understood they have roles within the County (McClure calls himself the CTO, Shuler is vice chair of the EDA and BBA), yet here they are championing a data center...it gets very confusing to me about whether this is a public sector effort or private sector initiative - it belongs firmly in the private sector...with Mr. Tong and PTS, who are best qualified to decide for themselves on these risks.
Since so many of these people making public statements aren't being clear on their roles, I have left a lot of these details in a not specific state.
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