The value of the American Express data center goes from being attributed to unnamed "local officials," with no attribution to any underlying data or analysis, to cold hard fact:
News & Record, April 20, 2010:
"After 20 years, local officials say, the company investment could surpass $1 billion."News & Record, January 20, 2011:
"American Express will not change its plans to build two data centers worth about $1 billion in eastern Guilford County,..."What are we, schmucks?
UPDATE: Thanks to an assist from Dick Barron, N&R editor John Nagy describes the sources for the 2010 value:
"The figure from last year comes from people within the industry with familiarity of the American Express project and from individuals in the data center industry who provided cost estimate per square foot for a data center project."
American Express says it is investing over $1 billion in the data center. The figure is not the estimated economic impact.
ReplyDeleteWho said that?
ReplyDeleteThe company itself has stated that in a news release about the project, and it was stated during yesterday's news conference in Greensboro.
ReplyDeleteAnon, if you think that the self-interested VP of the company saying yesterday that his company plans on spending a billion dollars over twenty years makes good reporting out of "data centers worth $1 billion," then you are convincing me I've titled this post correctly.
ReplyDeleteReporters used to write of the "1,500-job FedEx hub." There was no such thing. There remains no such thing. There are no data centers worth $1 billion. Reporting something as empirical when it is based on someone's promise or guess is foolish and unprofessional. The N&R did the same thing last week when they reported, as fact, that the economic impact of the Figure Skating Championships would be $23.
Defend mediocrity if you must. Greensboro deserves better.
Sorry, not $23 above, but $23 million.
ReplyDeleteAlso - a new aviation company considering Smith Reynolds (left with much empty space after the 09 Pace aviation departure)is applying for a grant (maybe JDIA or NCone?) and said basically - for the right price in incentives, we will create 400 jobs over the next 4 years. Sigh.
ReplyDeleteThanks for commenting skater. Yes, I saw that too. At least what I read reported the the company was promising to create the jobs. It wasn't reported as a fact.
ReplyDelete