Another data center could be coming to Morrow County, like the one Amazon built near Umatilla, after the county's planning commission approved the Percheron Data Center for 274 acres about 11 miles outside of Boardman. The project by San Francisco-based Rowan Green Data Center LLC goes to a final vote of the Morrow County Board of Commissioners on Wednesday, Aug. 16.

HEPPNER — Morrow County is in line to get another data center, and its construction may start soon.

The county planning commission has approved the Percheron Data Center for 274 acres about 11 miles outside of Boardman. The project by San Francisco-based Rowan Green Data Center LLC goes to a final vote of the Morrow County Board of Commissioners on Wednesday, Aug. 16.

Construction could start within the next few months. Rowan will not be the operator of Percheron, but will lease the facility to a tenant who will utilize it.

“We’re still working with finding a customer,” said Bobby Hollis, Rowan’s chief commercial officer. “The kind of customers that align with our vision are the big tech customers you’ve heard of before. The types of companies we work with are the Microsofts, Amazons, Metas and Apples — companies that are as sustainable as we are.”

Amazon has a large presence in the region, and Apple and Meta have facilities in Prineville.

Data center on bigger scale

The “hyperscale” data center will consist of between two to five buildings depending on the end user’s needs and will include an employee parking lot, onsite wastewater management system, fire protection system and other infrastructure.

The facilities will cover 190 of the 274 formerly agriculturally zoned acres purchased from Industrial neighbors include the U.S. Navy and General Electric as well as a conservation area. The remaining acreage will serve as a buffer between the development and the latter.

Threemile Canyon Farms President Bill Antilla said in a letter of support for the project to the board of commissioners that Threemile has “never irrigated or actively farmed this parcel and has no plans to do so in the future. In fact, the property has not been farmed in the seven decades for which we have records. Research from the Morrow County Soil and Conservation District also concludes that the soil is ‘not farmable.’”

State Sen. Bill Hansell, R-Athena, affirmed this in his own statement to the board of commissioners: “As a lifelong resident of eastern Oregon, where my family has farmed for more than four generations, I respect and support the need to preserve productive agricultural land. However, the facts and testimony provided in this case indicate that the property in question has no agricultural value and could be put to much greater use with broad benefit for the region.”

Hollis said the site was formerly the home of a coal plant and has transmission infrastructure in place for Rowan to hook up to, though it will need to pipe in water. The site was selected after a multiyear search thanks in part to Eastern Oregon’s numerous renewable energy projects, which will enable Rowan to pursue its goal of “providing net zero power solutions for mission-critical green data centers.”

Oregon air makes a difference

He said the renewable energy presence accounts for much of the reason why other data and technology centers have decided to locate in the area.

As Rowan explains on the Percheron project website, “Data centers exist to store, process and access data and applications. With the rapid growth of digital technology and the internet, the demand for data storage and processing has increased significantly, meaning more data centers need to exist.”

The facilities are notorious for using a lot of energy to power the servers and the systems that cool them. Rowan is taking action to change that.

“The great thing about Oregon is you can often just use the air — you don’t have to cool as much as you would if you were in Arizona, for say … It’s very important, if you find the right place, the right site, then you have a lead on being more environmentally and sustainably minded,” Hollis explained.

Rowan Green Data Center LLC was established in November 2020 and is owned by Houston, Texas-based Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners, a specialist investment manager focused exclusively on renewables, storage and grid support infrastructure in the U.S., U.K. and Australia, including some of the largest utility and distributed scale onshore wind and solar power, battery storage, reserve peaking capacity, biomass, methane recovery, hydropower and flexible energy management solutions.

Surrounding communities to benefit

Corey Sweeney, mayor of Heppner, summarized the “significant economic opportunities” to Heppner and other communities in a letter to the board of commissioners: “The establishment of this project will not only create new quality, well-paying jobs but also stimulate various sectors of our local economy. With the increasing demand for data storage and processing capabilities, this new project will attract significant investment, both in terms of capital expenditure and ongoing operational expenses, and lead to increased revenue for our businesses and overall prosperity for our residents.”

The project also will further affirm the growing information technology sector of the regional economy, likely attracting future investment by other companies looking to site related projects.

Hollis said the nice thing about data centers is they don’t alter rural communities by drawing in thousands of workers overnight, but instead, once construction is complete, “a lot of data center technology allows for expansion … They represent good medium-size businesses that make sense in a small to medium-size town, which gives people the opportunity to rise to those needs over time.”

Though the general contractor for the project will be selected by the future tenant, Hollis said he expects a lot of the subcontractors to be sourced locally.

He said the first couple of buildings will probably be complete about a year after breaking ground, with hiring to follow and servers to be installed after that.

More information about the Percheron Data Center can be found at percherondatacenter.com.