Google Brings High Tech Jobs To Lenoir How Does A New Plant Affect Watauga? From wire and staff reports Lenoir is going high-tech and Watauga County may share the ride. Search engine giant Google Inc. announced last week it will expand its high-tech infrastructure to Lenoir, creating up to 210 jobs and investing as much as $600 million. Google Inc. will build a server on this site in Lenoir, located between Overlook Drive and Morganton Boulevard (N.C. 18) near several of Lenoir’s largest furniture factories. Gregg Floyd/Lenoir News-Topic THE GOOGLE FILE BIG MONEY: Google Inc. plans to invest up to $600 million in a new data center in Lenoir. The state is offering an incentive package worth $4.8 million. GOOGLE JOBS: The plan could create up to 210 jobs over the next four years. The company plans to hire people locally for construction and maintenance jobs, and provide training for technicians. GOOD NEWS: Local officials said the data center will help revive a strained economy in Lenoir. The town has suffered from the effects of thousands of lost jobs in the furniture and textile industries in recent years. The so-called “server farm” in Lenoir will start with one center that could expand over the next four years, officials said. The jobs will help revive a strained economy suffering the effects of thousands of jobs lost in the furniture and textile industries in recent years. Although it’s not clear how the new complex will affect Watauga County’s economy, most local officials are hopeful. “Any new business to the area — to the region — is a boon,” Dan Meyer, president of the Boone Area Chamber of Commerce said on Tuesday. “We’re especially delighted to have such a high-visibility company. I think with it will come specialists, technicians and certainly some satellite businesses that will piggyback on their being here.” Meyer added the move could give students at Appalachian State University the chance to “do something with their computer tech programs.” “Our neighboring counties have been savaged by business closings and the exporting of jobs, so the opportunity and potential of new businesses coming in is highly gratifying and we’re excited for them,” Meyer added. “We’re absolutely thrilled to death for our community and our citizens,” said Lenoir Mayor David Barlow. “Lenoir has been known for furniture and blue-collar jobs, and we were able to attract one of the world’s best-known companies.” The state plans to give the company $4.8 million as a part of a total incentives package that could reach more than $100 million. “This company will provide hundreds of good-paying, knowledge-based jobs that North Carolina’s citizens want,” Gov. Mike Easley said in a statement. The area’s water and power infrastructure — which was already in place because of the manufacturing facilities — made Lenoir a good fit, Google spokesman Barry Schnitt said. The company was also impressed with the team of local officials who negotiated with the company, he said. Google has similar sites around the world, but Schnitt declined to say how many or where they were, saying only that a similar center was built in The Dalles, Ore. The company plans to hire local workers for many of the jobs at the data center, such as construction and maintenance workers. Google also plans to train people for jobs as technicians — workers who help repair computer parts. People who’ve worked in the furniture or textile industries could qualify, Schnitt said. “It’s the same kinds of skills that we’d be looking for in technicians and we would just train them to do specific jobs,” he said. Local officials said retraining workers would help the economy. The unemployment rate in Caldwell County has been one of the state’s highest, hovering above 8 percent in the past few years, said Tim Sanders, a former county commissioner who helped lead negotiations with Google. The addition of Google could help attract other high-tech companies to the area, he said. “We still have good furniture jobs here and we hope to continue to grow those, but we’re also diversifying in high tech,” Sanders said. The average annual salary at the data center is expected to be $48,300, about $20,000 more than the average salary in Caldwell County. The recruitment of Google is the second high-tech score for the state’s economic developers since 2004, when both the state and local governments gave Dell Inc. $280 million worth of incentives to build a computer plant in Winston-Salem. The Dell plant opened in October 2005. The move won’t come without some costs, however. Area leaders agreed to waive 100 percent of the company’s business property taxes and 80 percent of its real-estate taxes for three decades. The N.C. General Assembly approved a proposal to eliminate sales taxes on electricity and certain other expenses, according to a report in the Raleigh News & Observer. On Jan. 10, Google was named as the best company to work for in America in a survey published in Fortune magazine. The Internet giant offers its workers amenities like free gourmet food, free laundry facilities as well as an onsite physician, childcare, and a “bring-your-dog-to-work” policy. It is not yet clear which, if any, of those amenities will be offered at the Lenoir facility. The list was compiled by Robert Levering and Milton Moskowitz of the Great Place to Work Institute in San Francisco, based on a survey of more than 105,000 employees in 446 companies.