Lockport site called closer than most to Yahoo! ideal
Agreement reached on 20-year tax break
Published: June 18, 2009, 12:30 am
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LOCKPORT — A Yahoo! executive came closer Wednesday than anyone in the company previously had to confirming that the Internet firm’s East Coast data center will be built here.
After presenting the plans for the project to the town Planning Board, Scott Noteboom, senior director of data center engineering and operations, said that although no site is perfect, Lockport comes closer than most.
“There isn’t an area that meets all our criteria. This [site] is very positive to our criteria. There is no place else where we’re further along in the process than here,” Noteboom said.
He said his team will make a recommendation to the Yahoo! board of directors next month. Town officials are confident that the $150 million project will land here.
Town Attorney Daniel E. Seaman said Yahoo! has agreed to terms of a 20-year property tax break, which includes full exemption from property taxes for the first 10 years.
The town Industrial Development Agency will hold a public hearing and vote on that package at 3 p. m. June 30, one hour before the Planning Board will hold a public hearing and vote on the site plan.
Seaman said the 190,000-square-foot complex will be taxed at 20 percent of its assessed value in years 11 and 12, and that proportion will increase by 20 percent every two years, until the center is taxed at full value in year 21.
Noteboom said Yahoo! is eager to go ahead with plans to break ground in August.
“We’re in a little bit of a race with the weather,” he said, although it will take more than a year to complete Phase 1 of the project.
Noteboom also clarified the job impact, saying the data center would create 75 jobs, not the 125 that Gov. David A. Paterson claimed last month. “I don’t know where that came from,”
Noteboom said.
The State Power Authority granted 15 megawatts of low-cost hydropower to Yahoo! for 15 years.
David R. Kinyon, the town’s economic development coordinator, released a statement saying Yahoo! will pay $450,000 to purchase a 30-acre parcel in the town’s industrial park off Junction Road. He also said the project will create “250 short-term construction jobs.”
Noteboom said the second phase of the project should follow in about two years. The first phase includes office space and six prefabricated metal pods stuffed with computer hardware, each equipped with a diesel- powered emergency generator. Phase 2 calls for six more computer pods, identical to the others.
The Town Board, meanwhile, voted Wednesday to ask the state Department of Transportation to study the roads within the industrial park to see if a speed limit can be set.
The roads are not currently posted, which means the speed limit is the state standard of 55 mph, Supervisor Marc R. Smith said.
The Transportation Department, not the town, will would decide what any posted speed limit should be, Seaman said.
The town IDA asked for the state study, which is the second one the Town Board has requested this month. It previously acted on a resident’s request for a speed study of Upper Mountain Road on the north side of the industrial park.
tprohaska@buffnews.com
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