Power Protection FEATURED ARTICLE

The move, reported in the Wall Street Journal, Facebook is also trying to build bonds with the surrounding community, in an effort that has including a barbecue for local residents, free dental care for area children, and donating uniforms for high-school athletic teams. The Prineville project demonstrates how the company is taking on significant additional costs and making an effort to form bonds with its burgeoning network of constituents.

The Prineville data center, housing servers required to run Facebook’s service for its greater than 500 million users, is owned and operated by the company. The location offers relatively affordable power rates and a cool climate that should help cut into cooling costs.

When completed, the data center will cover over 300,000 square feet. Prineville officials hope it will spawn a twin.

“What they have indicated to us is they would like to continue with expansion, which would require a second building just like the one they just built,” said Prineville city manager Steve Forrester (News - Alert).

Ken Patchett of Facebook, who manages the Prineville data center, remarked that the company has plans to do that, if the business need exists, but nothing has been finalized. “One of the major benefits was there was enough available land to expand,” he added. The company’s property includes approximately 120 acres. Building its own data centers makes Facebook more able to control its destiny by making the necessary expansion as economical as possible.

“A data center is always a cost center,” Mr. Patchett said. “We’re much more able to control our costs by doing it this way.” Facebook so far has leased its data centers in a number of locations. Recently, it said that it plans to build another owned data center in North Carolina.

Prineville is a town of about 10,000 people, and it was in need of new investment. The town is in Crook County, which has had unemployment approaching 19 percent recently. In the area, a significant number of timber-cutting jobs have been lost due to federal restrictions.

The Facebook project brought more than 200 construction jobs to the town, along with 35 or more full-time jobs at the new facility. The company has contributed over $1 million in fees to the town for access to basics such as water. The fees have helped reduce Prineville’s total debt by approximately 3 percent.

Facebook continues to grow, with Goldman Sachs, the global investment banking and securities firm, investing $450 million in the hot social networking firm. Goldman wants to raise as much as $1.5 billion from its wealthy clients to invest in Facebook.