Page 9 - BusinessWest Sept. 29, 2021

Jeff Daley says the data-center project could be a game changer for the region.
large power users.
“This is a key cost driver for the industry and
critical to making the hyper-scale data-center project feasible,” he went on. “Electricity expen- ditures typically represent 50% to 60% of the operating costs of a data center. Property taxes typically represent 10% to 15% of operating expenses. These two operating cost components, along with local regulatory approvals, are the pri- mary drivers to locate hyper-scale data centers to
New England.”
Bartone said Servistar
reviewed numerous sites in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts before focusing on Westfield, a community that emerged in this search roughly 18 months ago.
“We identified various parcels in the city’s indus- trial zones that met the requirements for the site, but the area is challenging to develop due to wetlands and endangered species, including the eastern
box turtle,” he noted. “So we needed a substantial amount of land that would support the 10 data-center building development while also allowing us to minimize environmental
impacts.”
Beyond meeting the energy, fiber, and prop-
erty-tax requirements, the site is also centrally located between Boston, New York City, Provi- dence, Albany, and Hartford, said Bartone, thus providing access to more than 34 million people in the Greater New York metropolitan area and New England. It is also in close proximity to the Westfield-Barnes regional airport with corporate service, only 20 miles from Bradley International Airport, and approximately 100 miles from Logan International Airport.
corporate offices of companies locating to West- field for their IT services,” he said, adding that this concentration of trained tech workers was still another selling point.
Powerful Statement
As he talked about the project and its pros- pects for becoming reality, Sullivan turned to the often-used analogy of getting over the goal line.
He said this project isn’t in the proverbial red zone yet, but it is certainly past midfield and making steady progress.
“There’s still a long way to go, but once they have options on the property and they’re doing work around wetlands and having discussions with the electricity suppliers, you’re past mid- field, but you’re not home yet,” he explained. “I don’t think you can have a higher, better use of that property.”
Daley said the next important step is approval of what’s known as a 121A, or PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes) property-tax agreement that locks in the assessed value of the property, with built- in annual increases in property-tax payments. Westfield officials have said the project would bring in $1.2 million in tax payments within three years, making the campus the largest taxpayer in the city.
A joint public hearing between the Planning Board and City Council on the proposed agree- ment is slated for early October, said Daley, add- ing that there are other approvals, on both the local and state levels, that must be secured in the coming months.
“Boston also has a high-tech, information- based economy that is an attractive market for
Data Center
Continued on page 56
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