Idaho Loses $250 Million Oracle Data Center

The state of Idaho has apparently lost out on a $250 million data center project for Oracle Corp. (ORCL), according to local media, who report that the giant software maker walked away when the property owner sought to raise their price as the deal was closing. Oracle has reportedly shifted its site location efforts to the Salt Lake City area.

The Idaho Business Review says plans for Oracle to build the data center in Meridian, Idaho, fell apart when the property owner raised the price of the site from $4.85 per square foot to $7 a square foot, an increase of 44 percent. The facility would have created 150 jobs paying an average of $65,000 a year.

Oracle has a Tier IV data center in Austin with 42,000 square feet of raised floor space, backed five 2-megawatt generators, storage of 80,000 gallons of diesel fuel and 50,000 gallons of water.

If Oracle locates in Salt Lake City, it would continue the recent progress in Utah, where ViaWest, Center 7 and EMC (Mozy) have all bought or built data centers in the past year.