Apple Doubling Down on Reno Data Center

It's official: the Apple data center campus in Reno, Nevada, is going to get a lot bigger than it is today in another win-win for Apple and one of the biggest little data center hubs in the country.

Apple announced that it will pour another $1 billion into the data campus at the Reno Technology Park in the Truckee River canyon east of Sparks, bringing “hundreds of jobs in operations and construction,” according to Apple executive Mike Foulkes.

In turn, Apple's $89 million in state and property and sales tax abatements awarded in 2012 with its original $1 billion investment will increase -- and that's not all.

Part of the addition will include a $4 million, 27,000 square-foot warehouse for shipping and receiving built on a vacant lot in downtown Reno, originally part of a tourism improvement district created in 2009. Because the Reno City Council voted on Wednesday to allow Apple to buy the land instead of leasing it, the company is now eligible to take advantage of a tourism tax break that will lower its sales tax rate to 0.5 percent from 8.265 percent, according to the Reno Gazette Journal.

Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval said in a statement that the Reno facility was "the first major economic development success in northern Nevada and helped place this region on the technology and innovation map." He continued, “Apple's decision to increase their local investment by $1 billion is a testament to our successful partnership and a demonstration that the best companies in the world are coming to Nevada, creating hundreds of jobs, investing in our communities and making our state their permanent home.”

See also: How Reno Became a Data Center Hub: A Timeline

The Apple data center is not the only massive server farm that feels at home and appreciated in Nevada. Massive Switch SuperNap is in Reno with eBay as the anchor tenant, and news came out in April that Google had acquired 1,210 acres in Nevada's Tahoe Reno Industrial Center that will house a future data center.

In a show of support for creating more manufacturing jobs in the US, Apple announced  a new $1 billion fund last week to make its vital role known in the national economy. The company broke down employment by state, showing where its 80,000 employees work. As you might have figured, more than half are in Silicon Valley.