Discover Financial Services announced Tuesday that it will add a $76 million data center at its New Albany, Ohio campus.
As with many of these site selection battles, the competition, this time from Arizona and South Carolina, was fierce and incentives were critical. Governor John Kasich's administration is offering a tax credit worth $4.1 million that will go before the Ohio Tax Credit Authority next week. Additionally the city is offering a property tax abatement and potentially additional tax breaks.
"We weren’t going to lose everything, but we could’ve lost jobs here, there isn’t any question about it," said Governor John Kasich. "These other states were ferociously competing against us. Not only did we avoid the loss, but we have exciting new gains."
The data center site is inside the Research and Information District of the New Albany Business Park, which has attracted other data centers, such as one in 2008 for Nationwide Mutual Insurance. The combined office space and data center will be 97,900 square feet. The data center is expected to open in late 2013 and the project included a total of 162 permanent jobs at its Albany campus. Discover has around 1,500 employees currently in New Albany.
