Facebook will add two more data centers at $2 billion Prineville complex

Facebook has an array of nine enormous data centers in Prineville and will build two more. Oregonian file photoFacebook plans to add two more huge data centers in the small central Oregon town of Prineville. The mammoth, $2 billion complex will have 11 data centers when Facebook finishes its latest expansion in 2023.The social media company built its very first data center in Prineville back in 2009, lured by Oregon’s uniquely generous tax breaks.Land is plentiful in the high desert above town and Facebook has expanded steadily over the past dozen years. The Prineville site remains Facebook’s largest complex of data centers anywhere, and will be nearly 4.6 million square feet when complete.Each of the two new Prineville data halls will be 450,000 square feet, on par with their predecessors. But Facebook said these buildings have a new interior design, with servers on two separate floors instead of just one.Only 350 people work in Facebook’s facilities, most in relatively low-wage security jobs. However, the data centers have attracted thousands of temporary construction workers to Prineville over more than a decade of nearly constant construction.That has helped prop up Prineville as its historic timber industry faded, and in the years following…
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