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New York just passed a one-year temporary ban on data centers

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Re: New York just passed a one-year temporary ban on data centers

#31

Post by jcranmer »

alpha_squared wrote: post #18
thinkingtoilet wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So other people's back yards it is! What a wonderful philosophy. As for Amazon HQ, I don't know what NY's deal was but I was in Boston when it was a consideration and the amount of tax breaks they wanted was insane and would have been a huge net loss for the city. I'm very glad it wasn't moved there. It doesn't matter if you create a few thousand jobs if you get literal billions in tax breaks, it's a net loss for the…

If I remember correctly, reporting at the time just after DC was selected was suggesting that it was always going to be DC to be in close proximity to government and that the whole fiasco was a way to extract as many concessions as possible from the city in its efforts to "compete" for the new offices. What even is an "HQ" if the actual headquarters that disproportionately houses more office workers than anywhere els…

Hell, after the 'competition' was announced, many commentators observed that it was pretty much written with Arlington, VA in mind, and the competition was less a serious competition and more a ploy to try to get a lot of subsidies for what their plans already were. It's also worth noting that the bids that were accepted (Arlington and New York) were some of the most miserly bids.

Re: New York just passed a one-year temporary ban on data centers

#32

Post by pchristensen »

nailer wrote: post #20
fourseventy wrote: post #12

[flagged]

Alaska maybe? Water, cold temperatures, low latency to contiguous USA. Shove them underground so nobody has to look at them.

Excavating that much volume would be a heck of an expense.

Re: New York just passed a one-year temporary ban on data centers

#33

Post by distortionfield »

FergusArgyll wrote: post #22

I don't get it, nyc wants to add government programs, they obviously need to tax something. Here come massive corps willing to invest a ton of money, just tax them at some reasonable rate and voila, you can now pay for city funded grocery stores or whatever

They already have a balanced budget, why would they need to cave to these corporations?

Re: New York just passed a one-year temporary ban on data centers

#35

Post by bloppe »

thinkingtoilet wrote: post #5
defmetrix wrote: post #3

I want to continue to build data centers, but I dont really want one in my back yard either. But New York seems to be hurting itself lately, the states job growth has slowed over the past few years. This reminds me of them canceling the Amazon HQ.

So other people's back yards it is! What a wonderful philosophy. As for Amazon HQ, I don't know what NY's deal was but I was in Boston when it was a consideration and the amount of tax breaks they wanted was insane and would have been a huge net loss for the city. I'm very glad it wasn't moved there. It doesn't matter if you create a few thousand jobs if you get literal billions in tax breaks, it's a net loss for the…

The biggest possible tax break is zero tax, which is what you get when they move out of state

Re: New York just passed a one-year temporary ban on data centers

#36

Post by ecshafer »

dylan604 wrote: post #6
defmetrix wrote: post #3

I want to continue to build data centers, but I dont really want one in my back yard either. But New York seems to be hurting itself lately, the states job growth has slowed over the past few years. This reminds me of them canceling the Amazon HQ.

Once construction of a data center has completed, how many jobs will they actually be adding? It reminds me of the people saying that oil pipelines are good for jobs, but that's again only a temporary blip during construction. For data centers, for the sheer size of them, they are massively empty of people.

How many temporary and permanent jobs does an empty lot provide? Many temporary and a few permanent sounds much better.

Re: New York just passed a one-year temporary ban on data centers

#37

Post by dec0dedab0de »

esseph wrote: post #15
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #10

[flagged]

> The obvious answer to everyone's concerns is to build them in unused buildings in cities that already have infrastructure to support them. This is the problem. These are mostly old office buildings. They are not designed to supply that much electricity and water on each floor. These racks and equipment also weigh a lot and the building floors and building itself probably isn't rated for that. Not only that, but to…

Around here they are cutting down forests. Sometimes even protected forests without getting permits, trying to beg for forgiveness after the fact.

They don't need to maximize every inch of the building, if that means less capacity then so be it.

As far as water and power, that's why I mentioned in cities that already have capacity. Or at least the ability to run new lines without digging up the roads, because they have tunnels for such things.

Re: New York just passed a one-year temporary ban on data centers

#39

Post by kotaKat »

dylan604 wrote: post #6
defmetrix wrote: post #3

I want to continue to build data centers, but I dont really want one in my back yard either. But New York seems to be hurting itself lately, the states job growth has slowed over the past few years. This reminds me of them canceling the Amazon HQ.

Once construction of a data center has completed, how many jobs will they actually be adding? It reminds me of the people saying that oil pipelines are good for jobs, but that's again only a temporary blip during construction. For data centers, for the sheer size of them, they are massively empty of people.

One data center in upstate NY tried to include a call center as part of it in their quote of "500 jobs" for a planned Bitcoin farm, but then mentioned that the call center would be doing 'healthcare advocacy' calls.

My stomach twisted because that can generally just mean one thing in my experience in the call center / tech support industry: outbound Medicaid/Medicare ripoff scam service calls.

Their DC never came to fruition, but a few others up here did. "Hundreds of jobs" didn't happen, they got maybe like 30 parts swappers and security dorks to run around an old Superfund site and play hardware babysitter.

Re: New York just passed a one-year temporary ban on data centers

#40

Post by bnop »

arjie wrote: post #8

Am I the only one who wants a datacenter in his backyard? I actually went down a little over a year ago to get a cabinet down at Hosting.com’s old location round the corner only to find that they’ve been gone from there (and the DC business) for a few years now and the new owners have kept it fallow. I have to drive down to Fremont for a similar price point now. I would gladly have paid 30% more to just go down the s…

I would do a little due diligence here if I were you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bP80DEAbuo

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