Nearly a year after an announcement of a $600 million investment in its Pryor, Okla., data center, Google announced another expansion at the location. The expansion is one part of the company’s $13 billion investment in various U.S. states. The company owns approximately 800 acres at the MidAmerica Industrial Park where it employs more than 400 people. The most recent announcement brings the company’s total investment in Oklahoma to more than $2.5 billion.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai wrote in a statement that the effort will enable Google to “hire tens of thousands of employees and enable the creation of more than 10,000 new construction jobs in Nebraska, Nevada, Ohio, Texas, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Virginia.”
Google announced it was coming to Oklahoma in 2007, and its first data center opened in Pryor’s MidAmerica Industrial Park four years later. By the time Google unveiled its second building in 2012, the company’s investment in the state was $700 million.
“Time and again, we have proven to be an excellent location for expansion,” said Dave Stewart, chief administrative officer at MidAmerica Industrial Park. “As one of the largest employers in the industrial park, Google is committed to not only investing in its facility, but also in the surrounding communities.”
From the time Google opened its first data center in Pryor in 2011, the local school district’s total assessed property valuation grew to $325.6 million in 2015, an increase of 168 percent. Over that same span, Mayes County’s assessed property valuation grew to $498.4 million, a rise of 82 percent.
