NY State Data Center Bound for Utica?

The New York State Legislature has approved $99 million in funding for a new data center to consolidate its far-flung systems. The facility could mean 200 jobs with an average $50,000 a year annual salary for its destination community. The state is currently considerng six sites in the Utica area, according to local media.

The SUNY Board of Trustees approved the sale of 21 acres Tuesday for a data center candidate site at the SUNY Institute of Technology at Utica/Rome, moving the the college near the front of the pack of competing sites. "We are committed to putting it in the Utica area," Jason Brown, a spokesman for Gov. George Pataki, told the Utica Observer-Dispatch. "(The Office of General Services) will further analyze that site, and if it will pass all of their standards, then that will be the one we will go with."

The SUNYIT campus was one of about six sites in the Mohawk Valley that was under consideration for the center. Other sites included the Mohawk Valley Psychiatric Center in Utica and the Oneida County Airport Industrial Park in Whitestown. The center would house all of the state's data computer systems,