Microsoft Is Behind Mystery Data Center in Iowa

 . Photo: Microsoft

 

 

The mystery didn’t last long: Microsoft is the company behind the proposed $700 million data center near Des Moines, Iowa.

 

“Project Mountain” is an expansion of Microsoft’s existing data center in West Des Moines, pushing the company’s investment in the region to the $1 billion range, says Debi Durham, director of the state agency in charge of economic development. The Iowa Economic Development Authority board approved $20 million in tax credits for the project.

 

The company already employs around 50 people in Iowa and plans to add at least 24 more for the new data center.

 

Microsoft had originally purchased a plot of land big enough for the expansion, according to the Des Moines Register, which first reported the news.

 

The Des Moines area has long been a finance and insurance hub and serves as the headquarters for companies such as Wells Fargo, ING Group, Principal Financial Group and AvivaUSA. Now it’s becoming a significant hub for data centers. Facebook announced a $1.5 billion data center in Altoona, Iowa last April, and Google already has a data center about two hours away in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Last year the Register reported that 3-4 companies were evaluating the area for potential data centers.

 

Like other popular sites for massive new data centers, such as rural Oregon and North Carolina, Iowa offers tax incentives, inexpensive land and cheap energy. “The biggest issue for these companies is the cost of energy,” says Durham. “We have natural energy resources that are nationally competitive.” Iowa doesn’t charge a tax on electricity, which provides a very large savings to these companies. She says these energy tax incentives were originally created for manufacturing companies, which are still the biggest employers in the state. She also points out that 20% of the state’s energy comes from wind. Facebook, for example, cited availability of wind power as a major reason it chose Altoona for its data center.

 

 

Mystery lurks in "Under the Dome&"; series based on Stephen King novel

Although we’re accustomed to broadcast networks using the summer as a dumping ground for programs they have lost faith in, that’s not always the case. “Under the Dome” (9 p.m. Mountain time Monday on KUTV channel 2) was commissioned specifically for a summer airing. Based on a Stephen King novel, this is a limited-run series (13 episodes) that, in success, could possibly return next summer. (Producers have sketched out a story beyond the first season.)
It’s also not the first time CBS has tried a story based on Kings’ work in the summer. In 1991 the network aired a seven-episode series, “Golden Years.”
‘‘Under the Dome” is vintage Stephen King: A large cast of characters grappling with a seemingly supernatural event when a dome descends on their town, Chester’s Mill, Maine.
Monday’s premiere offers an effective setup to the series, introducing more than a dozen characters and slowly peeling away how they are all related.
The pilot, written by Brian K. Vaughn (“Lost”) and directed by Niels Arden Oplev (the original, 2009 “Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”), is filled with an array of creative dome encounters ­— a cow gets cut in half by the dome, an airplane smashes into the dome, etc. — but in the early going viewers learn little about the dome itself. Where did it come from? Can you dig under it? Presumably these are the questions “Under the Dome” will spend the next 13 weeks addressing.
The dome descends just after Dale “Barbie” Barbara (Mike Vogel, “Pan Am,” ‘‘Bates Motel”) finishes burying a body in the woods. He gets spooked driving down a road when he passes a sheriff (Jeff Fahey, “Lost”) and deputy (Natalie Martinez) driving in the opposite direction. Barbie accidently drives off the road onto a farm where he witnesses the dome descend before saving a kid (Colin Ford) from falling airplane parts.
Meanwhile, that kid’s sister, Angie (Britt Robertson), is having sex with her insecure boyfriend, Junior (Alexander Koch), who turns into a domestic-violence perpetrator, which happens kind of a lot in King’s stories.
Junior is the son of city councilman James “Big Jim” Rennie (Dean Norris, “Breaking Bad”), who seems to know something about extra propane shipments the town received just before the arrival of the dome, shipments that caught the eye of a nosey neighbor, prompting her to call local newspaper editor Julia (Rachelle Lefevre, “Twilight”) even as the neighbor admits, “I get my news online, sweetheart, like everybody else.”
That seems like a lot of characters already, but it’s really just the start. There are also characters at the local community radio station and a couple passing through town while taking their daughter to camp.
The premiere hints at some sort of conspiracy by the town fathers, but also an affliction that causes seizures in young people left under the dome. And at least one major character may be taken out by the dome pretty early on.
With Stephen King stories, it’s all about character development and plot execution. So far, the “Under the Dome” characters are just sketches and the plot is just getting started. It remains to be seen if either will merit watching for a full season, but the pilot does exactly what it should: It intrigues and makes the case for viewers to come back next week for more.

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