If there were no enterprise zone in Prineville, there would be no Facebook data center.

After officially announcing plans to build a data center in Prineville on Thursday, Facebook officials told The Bulletin that the tax incentive offered to the company through an enterprise zone was a key reason it came to Central Oregon. By locating its new data center in the zone, Facebook will be excused from paying as much as $2.8 million a year in local taxes.

“The enterprise zone helped direct us to the community,” said Tom Furlong, director of site operations for Facebook.

Prineville may not have even been a consideration if there weren’t an enterprise zone, said Jason Carr, manager of the Prineville office of Economic Development for Central Oregon.

“If the enterprise zone didn’t exist in Prineville, this project would not be moving forward,” said Carr, who worked to bring the company to the area.

Facebook has been looking for a site for about a year, and examined several throughout Oregon and Washington before narrowing its decision to Prineville, and buying land off Tom McCall Road near the Humane Society of the Ochocos. Other Central Oregon locations, such as Juniper Ridge in Bend, were not on the company’s radar, said Furlong, who runs Facebook’s data centers and selects where they will be located.

This will be the first data center Facebook will own. It leases multiple spaces in California and Virginia.

Using wind power

Having a nearby power supply and access to water also were factors in the decision-making process. Data centers are large power users, and Facebook will tap into Pacific Power’s lines just north of the 124-acre lot the company bought earlier this month for $3.2 million.

Facebook also will initially use water from the city of Prineville, but may eventually drill a well, Furlong said.

Water is one of the primary resources needed for the center’s extensive air conditioning system.

Data centers contain thousands of computer servers that allow companies such as Facebook to operate its Web site. And the servers get hot because of the mountains of information that constantly flow through the Web site and into the system.

Each time you upload a photo, make a comment on a friend’s “wall” or use a Facebook application, that information is processed and stored in the servers of one of Facebook’s data centers. With more than 350 million Facebook users, those servers must work hard to keep the Web site running.

Keeping those centers cool is necessary in order to ensure the centers, and therefore the Web site, operate efficiently.

Central Oregon’s climate is going to help keep Facebook up and running, and also will save the company water and money, Furlong said. The building’s design incorporates a system that takes in wind and uses it to cool the stacks of computers.

“If you need lots of cold, you use what you have outside,” Furlong said.

If the data center is able to use less water and more air to cool the system, the end result is a cheaper water bill.

The decision to build a data center reflects the company’s rapid expansion. Growing from a startup founded by a group of college students in 2004, Facebook is now growing by the thousands each day, and brings in millions of dollars of ad revenue each year.

Besides being Facebook’s first data center, the purchase of the Prineville property represents the first land the company has ever owned, said Kathleen Loughlin, a spokeswoman for Facebook.

“This is a big deal for Facebook,” said Barry Schnitt, the director of policy communications for the company. “We don’t have any deals bigger than this.”

Furlong said the company will maintain its leased centers even after the Prineville center is completed in 2011.

Locating centers in various places throughout the country helps the Web site operate smoothly, Furlong said. Eventually, Facebook may consolidate its centers.

Despite the enterprise zone, Facebook won’t be getting a free ride from the county and the city. Because of state laws, the company must still pay about $27,000 in property taxes on the land.

Community fee

And it made agreements to pay a community fee to Crook County and Prineville of $110,000 a year. Prineville also is getting a franchise fee based on Facebook’s power bill, which EDCO’s Carr said could translate into hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

During the next year, subcontractors of Portland-based firm Fortis Construction Inc. will build the data center. That might create as many as 200 jobs, most of which will be local hires, Facebook said.

The estimated cost for the building and its contents is $188.2 million. It will be 147,000 square feet — about 30,000 square feet larger than Crook County records initially showed — and will be built on about 30 acres of the company’s land. In future years, the building size and number of servers in it could expand, Furlong said.

Prevailing wage

In the data center, Facebook will employ about 35 people. The jobs will range from entry-level positions to higher-paying senior-level technicians, Furlong said. One stipulation of Facebook landing the benefits of the enterprise zone, which is to last for 15 years, is that it must maintain a 35-person average level of employment and pay employees 150 percent of the county’s average annual wage.

“I feel confident that the prevailing wage will be met,” Furlong said.

Who’s hired remains to be seen. Furlong said he hasn’t hired anyone yet, adding that he will ensure Central Oregonians and Prineville residents are able to apply when jobs are posted to Facebook’s Web site.

Crook County needs the jobs. Its unemployment rate in November was a state-high 17.4 percent, the latest data available.

Facebook also will strive to meet the gold certification level for the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (commonly known as LEED) rating system, Furlong said. The system rates buildings based on sustainable and green building practices.

Facebook staff are designing the data center’s operating systems, which will guide the building’s construction.

Nearly 100 local and state government officials, representatives from Facebook and others involved with the project attended Thursday’s announcement. Prior to Thursday, Facebook tried to hide its identity, operating under the name Vitesse LLC.

“(Vitesse) kept telling us, ‘Once we tell you the name, you’re going to be really dazzled.’ And we were,” said Crook County Judge Mike McCabe. “It’s such a shot in the arm. We’ve been struggling. It’s huge.”

After Mayor Mike Wendel and Furlong announced Facebook, Wendel and a few other officials gave Furlong a county- and city-purchased Stetson hat.

“Welcome to cowboy country, Tom,” Wendel said to Furlong.

Other moments during the event spoke to the disparity between Prineville, a town of about 10,000, and Facebook, one of the most visited Web sites on the Internet.

McCabe said this project is important to Crook County, even if he doesn’t understand most technology, let alone the technology behind Facebook.

“The only blueberries in my world make great pies,” McCabe said, intending to reference the Blackberry smart-phone device. Looking at the Facebook staff, he added, “Do you guys know what a blueberry pie even is?”

Wendel said he was glad to see the project come to fruition after months of discussions. “This was a project that everybody in the room felt from day one, this was a fit,” Wendel said.

Kris Karpstein works for Hooker Creek, which is clearing debris and doing initial construction work for Facebook. Karpstein said the Facebook project helped employ 12 to 15 previously unemployed construction workers.

“I need to thank them for the employees (of Hooker Creek) and the employees’ families,” Karpstein said.

Facebook held a groundbreaking ceremony shortly after the announcement. “It’s very exciting for us to be here,” he said. “This is a very big step for our company.”

Become a fan

You can visit the Prineville data center’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/prinevilledatacenter. As of 9 p.m. Thursday, only nine hours after the announcement, the data center had more than 530 fans.