Good news for Council Bluffs, Iowa. A new neighbor – some guy named Google – has come to town and dropped $600 million and 200 new jobs. Google’s Council Bluffs data center has been under development since 2007. According to the Des Moines Register, both Microsoft and IBM may follow Google to Iowa. Multi-hundred million dollar data centers are a far cry from the credit card call centers that found favor with Iowa many years ago.
Given the hard economic times of today, this is definitely a feel good story for Iowa. Data centers don’t create the numbers of jobs that manufacturing used to, but most any community would take the hundreds of jobs averaging $50k/year being created by Google’s center – not to mention what may follow from Microsoft and IBM. Governor Chet Culver tells the Des Moines Register, “A few years ago, if students wanted to work in wind energy or for a large IT firm, there wasn’t an option here. Today, young people can realize their dreams at home.”
