Austin Offers Incentives for Hewlett-Packard

The city of Austin is preparing to offer $3.2 million in tax incentives to computer giant Hewlett-Packard in a bid to seal the deal on a new $300 million data center, according to local news reports. The new facility would create at least 140 jobs in the Austin area, pating an average of about $60,000 apiece. Hewlett Packard is retrofitting a building at the Freescale Semiconductor campus on Ed Bluestein Boulevard in Southeast Austin and is also said to be considering a second site in Wells Branch. Austin has become a magnet for enterprise data centers in recent years, with Oracle (2002) and Home Depot also locating facilities in the Texas capital.