Inside Yahoo's Site Selection Process

What goes into landing a major data center project? The Buffalo News takes an in-depth look at the effort to land a $150 million Yahoo data center project for the town of Lockport in western New York. It was an effort that involved more than 100 officials from 31 different entities, with Buffalo Niagara Enterprise directing traffic.   

“In the end, it was a real team approach. This very rarely happens in New York,” said Richard Kessel, president and CEO of the New York Power Authority. “The governor said get it done. We got it done.”

Yahoo officials would ultimately make five site visits to the area before deciding on the Lockport site, which will feature an innovative energy-efficient design dubbed the Yahoo Computing Coop. Technical specifications were critical, and local officials sought to keep pace with the company's questions. "Everybody had to rely on each other to keep it in the forefront, keep up the urgency, address the company’s needs and push it through approval,” Thomas Kucharski, president of Buffalo Niagara Enterprise, told the paper. “You had to keep bird-dogging it on a daily basis.”