Mystery Company Behind Project Oasis is Travelers Insurance

Development companies may have to come up with some new code names. One of the last secretive projects in the midwest, "Project Oasis" has come out of stealth as a $200 million data center for global insurance company Travelers Insurance. The Omaha World-Herald reports that Travelers is the company behind the project, and has selected Omaha suburb Springfield, Nebraska as the next site for a data center to pair with its Georgia facility.

“Travelers is excited about the opportunity to build a new data center in Greater Omaha, and we look forward to next week's Sarpy County Board meeting,” company spokeswoman Delker Herbert Vardilos said in a statement to The World-Herald.

A Tuesday vote will determine if the development agreement is approved between Travelers and Sarpy County. Travelers could be eligible for a round of new state tax incentives for companies that invest at least $200 million in a data center and employ at least 30 people. The Sarpy County Economic Development Corp., which brokered the deal, has an option on the land. The property already has been rezoned to light industrial, and the Omaha Public Power District plans to build a substation to power the data center.

Numerous data center developments over past years have come down to Iowa and Nebraska for final locations - with Google, Microsoft, and most recently Facebook deciding on Iowa, and Yahoo, PayPal and Fidelity Investments landing in Nebraska.