Google gives size of center

Based on the preliminary site plan Google submitted to the city, Wasco County Commission Chair Scott Hege believes 10 million is low.

“That’s a fairly conservative number,” he said. “I expect it to be a lot more than that. That’s a for sure thing. It will be different than 10 million.”

Google sent a physical constraints application to the City of The Dalles Planning Department Monday but that only includes utility and grading plans, nothing structural.

Senior Planner Dawn Hert expects to receive the building permits in the next couple of weeks and that should give a clearer picture of the number of cubic feet.

Under an enterprise zone agreement, the figure is important because instead of taxes, Google’s payments to Wasco County and the City of The Dalles over the next 15 years will be based on the number of cubic feet of the data center.

The minimal initial payment will be 16 cents per cubic foot, which at 10 million cubic feet would equal $1.6 million to be split

between the city and county. Google will also pay an additional $250,000 to the Port of The Dalles for brownfield redevelop-

ment to rehab industrial land.

Payments to the city and county for the following 14 years will be 11.4 cents per cubic foot which would come to $1.14 million.

The Port of The Dalles closed the sale of its 24-acre parcel in the Columbia Gorge Industrial Center to Google for $4.271 million on Nov. 18.

The agreement with Google is the third for the county and city and will be by far the most lucrative.

Under the first 15-year agreement, Google is paying $250,000 each year to the city and county. The initial fee was $250,000.

The second agreement, finalized in 2013, finds the company paying $800,000 annually for 15 years, plus an initial fee of $1.2 million.