Facebook picks Ft. Worth for $1 billion data center

Social media giant Facebook made official its selection of Fort Worth, Texas, from among 220 cities to build a $1 billion data center complex.

The mega-data center is where servers will process news feeds from 1.5 billion Facebook users around the world.

The ceremonial groundbreaking Tuesday culminated a yearlong vetting process. The first of three 250,000-square-foot buildings on a 110-acre site is expected to be up and running by the end of 2016.

Tom Furlong, Facebook's vice president of infrastructure, said the Fort Worth facility will be the company's "most efficient yet."

The Fort Worth center will help Facebook with its mission to connect the world, and "we want to connect the next five billion" from here, he said.

Fort Worth business and political leaders said Facebook was attracted to the area for the availability of an employee talent pool, as well as electricity and water capabilities, among other things.

To sweeten the deal, the city and county offered millions in tax incentives even though the data center will not create a huge number of jobs. Facebook officials committed to at least 40 positions under terms of the incentives, but they say the figure could go higher than that. The jobs will pay an annual salary of at least $70,000.

But the complex will generate million in taxes, despite the incentive deals, because of the huge value of equipment at the site, and require little in the way of infrastructure spending.

In addition to its Facebook users, the company needs to expand its data center capacity to handle growing demand from its 700 million Messenger users, 300 million Instagram users, as well as groups and companies using other Facebook platforms to build memberships and businesses.

"All of these continue to grow," said Michael Kirkland, a company spokesman. "This is just the tip of the iceberg."

Facebook has said the Fort Worth facility will be the world's most environmentally friendly data center. It will be fully powered by a wind farm about 100 miles northwest of Fort Worth, and will recycle water.

The Fort Worth site will be the company's fifth data center. Its four operating data centers are in Altoona, Iowa; Forest City, N.C.; Prineville, Ore.; and Lulea, Sweden.

Last year, Facebook reported a profit of $2.9 billion on revenue of $12.5 billion.

Facebook started looking for a site for a new data center in July 2014, but didn't make its first visit to Fort Worth until March, said David Berzina, executive vice president of economic development at the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce.

"The deal started a year ago and it tested the county's and city's negotiation process to the limit," he said.