By Doug Flanagan, Wenatchee World

Friday, June 25, 2010

QUINCY — Monday’s event to celebrate the boom in data center construction spurred by special tax-incentive legislation featured a variety of speakers who spread around credit for the successes in Quincy.

Dave Sabey, the owner of Sabey Data Center Properties, might have summed up the feelings of everybody in attendance best, though.

“Isn’t it great,” Sabey said as he took the podium, “when the system works?”

House Bill 3147, which allows a 15-month sales tax exemption on the purchase and installation of computers and energy for new data centers in rural counties, and Senate Bill 6789, a companion bill concerning sales and use tax exemptions for certain equipment and infrastructure contained in data centers, were approved by the state Legislature earlier this year.

The impact of the two bills is already being felt in the Quincy area. Earlier this year, Microsoft announced it will begin an expansion project that will make its Columbia Data Center the largest such facility in the world.

Gov. Chris Gregoire was the keynote speaker at the event at the Reiman-Simmons House.

“It’s great to be here. This is a celebration for all of us,” she said. “Quincy is known for its wonderful agriculture, and today we can offer up a diverse economy thanks to the data centers. This is an opportunity for us to emerge and embrace progressive, 21st-century jobs.”

Gregoire said an important element of the data centers’ expansion into Washington will be the construction jobs they will provide.

“In some areas of Washington, there’s a 50 percent unemployment rate in construction,” she said. “I’ve been told that Washington will never fully recover (financially) until construction recovers. This is a good opportunity to put people to work who desperately need jobs.”

Gregoire finished her speech by praising Quincy for providing the resources, infrastructure and other elements needed for tech companies to locate here.

“We’re not going to take a back seat to Oregon or any other state. We want to make sure Washington is the home of hi-tech, right here in Quincy,” she said.

Rep. Cary Condotta from the 12th Legislative District spoke about the teamwork involved to get the legislation approved.

“In this struggling economy, it’s hard to find optimism,” he said. “There’s not a lot of bright lights out there. It’s good to see an optimistic situation. It’s all come together because of collaboration. This is the beginning of something special. It’s going to take that kind of collaboration to move the economy forward.”

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