U.S. Bank has announced plans to build a $250 million data center in Chaska that will eventually employ 18 workers.
The bank will partner with Dallas-based Stream Data Centers on the 56,000-square-foot facility, which should take one year to build.
"The thing that we like is that these are higher-skill jobs, and the chances are that those workers might end up moving out here in time," said Mark Windschitl, mayor of Chaska, a southwest metro city in Carver County.
"The biggest thing is we have our own power company, and the data center will be a big power user," Windschitl said, so the city will benefit from electricity revenue as well as from property taxes.
Chaska's City Council approved a tax abatement Monday night that is valued at nearly $548,000 over 20 years to support the project. Windschitl said he also just received a $250,000 grant from the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) and the regional development group Greater MSP to help defray part of the estimated $1.13 million in infrastructure improvements that will be needed at an electric substation.
The proposed data center will be built in the west-central part of the city, he said, in a small industrial park that already has two data centers owned by Stream Data Centers and UnitedHealthcare.
"It will be a facility where we will process data for many of our business applications, and will act as a backup to our primary data center, when needed," said U.S. Bank spokesman Dana Ripley.
DEED will also provide a $287,000 grant from the state's job creation fund once the center is up and running. The Minneapolis-based bank could be eligible as well for sales tax incentives under the state's data center program.
