Verrus, a data center development firm founded by Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners spun out from Alphabet, is working with the City of Salem on a proposed data center campus the city values at US$ 5.1 billion.
Oakline at Mill Creek, as the campus is currently known, would consist of three buildings and a utility substation designed to support cloud computing, AI, and enterprise services. The campus would sit on 75 acres inside Salem’s Mill Creek Corporate Center.
“Verrus’ proposal represents a potential opportunity for Salem. The City of Salem is committed to carefully evaluating the proposal and taking necessary steps to ensure it aligns with our community’s long-term interests,” said Krishna Namburi, Salem City Manager in a statement. “As part of our normal processes, we will continue to evaluate the proposal’s economic benefits, infrastructure needs, environmental impacts and overall community considerations.”
At present, the campus exists only as a proposal, with the City of Salem noting that Verrus would still need to take part in a formal development pre-application process where the firm would discuss the project in detail with city staff. The proposal would be reviewed through the city’s planning, development, building, utility, and regulatory processes.
According to a website for the project launched by Verrus this week, the land for the proposed campus won’t need to be rezoned as the Mill Creek Corporate Center is zoned as an Employment Center where data centers are an outright permitted use.
Regarding water, Verrus notes that the facility will use a closed-loop cooling system and that “responsible water use is a core engineering principle for this project.”
As for power, Verrus and its development partners will pay directly for infrastructure upgrades as well as share the ongoing cost of maintaining the grid to the benefit of Portland General Electric, the utility serving Salem, customers. Verrus says the facility can reduce power draw during periods of peak grid stress. Furthermore, the facility will lean on lithium iron phosphate battery power as a primary backup rather than diesel generators. It isn’t clear at this stage if diesel generators will factor into the backup mix at all.
The City of Salem appears to be on board with the proposed campus highlighting that the investment is taxable and that after the first three years of operation the city would put tax revenues toward police, fire and other services for the benefit of residents and businesses. This would be the first data center in Salem with the city noting that there “are very few sites in Salem that have the necessary acreage and zoning to support data center development.”