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DURHAM -- City Council members voted unanimously Monday night to offer EMC Corp. another $1 million in economic-development incentives to build a data center in a warehouse near the Imperial Center.
The city money follows incentive grants from the state and Durham County. The County Commissioners agreed to chip in $1.2 million, the state $7.4 million.
City Economic and Workforce Development Director Kevin Dick said the company sought incentives to narrow the difference between electricity rates here and the four other places it's considering as the site for the data center.
The Massachusetts-based company is also reported to have considered building it in Virginia, New York, Washington state and Canada.
"Data centers are very energy-intensive facilities," Dick said, adding that electricity costs here are low but not as low as those in other places EMC is considering.
The company expects to put $280 million into the project by 2015, and create 292 jobs, Dick said.
Of those, 112 would be at the new data center, which is ticketed for the Essex Warehouse at 4121 Surles Court. The rest would go to EMC's present facility in RTP.
Dick said officials expect the project to generate $402,000 for the city each year in tax revenue, split between property taxes and levies on EMC's electrical draw.
Business leaders from the Greater Durham Chamber of Commerce said the 7.7 to 1 return over 20 years made agreeing to the incentives request an easy call.
"That's a good deal," said Keith Burns, the group's chairman, adding that the project should have ripple effects throughout the local economy.
The only hitch in the debate came when Dick told council members that EMC had asked him to withhold from public release any data about the demographics of its workforce.
That sparked a series of questions from Councilman Howard Clement, who said he was "uncomfortable" about debating the proposal without knowing the statistics. The council makes it a habit to make sure companies hire racial minorities, he noted.
"If they can't tell us what their personnel policies are with regard to demographics, I don't know what kind of precedent we're setting," Clement said.
EMC's North Carolina vice president, Bob Hawkins, said the company is traditionally reluctant to release any information about its staff.
"It was very difficult for me to even get information for release as to the number of jobs we're creating," he said, adding that while, he'd given the information to Dick, EMC's public-relations staff hadn't authorized him to make it public.
Dick said he'd looked over the numbers and said the company employed people "across five ethnicities," and could justly claim to have a diverse workforce if not one that was "exactly reflective" of Durham's population.
Prodded by Mayor Bill Bell, Dick promised to share the numbers privately with Clement. Hawkins also told the councilman the company is an equal-opportunity employer.
Activists from the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People were present and raised no objections. They stressed, however, that the company should try to work with N.C. Central University and other groups to broaden its recruitment efforts.
"Don't turn it down, but we're going to have to deal with it," said Lavonia Allison, the committee's chairwoman.
The city incentives offer is a seven-year deal that pays only if EMC builds the data center, hires for it and turns in a workforce development plan that gives Durham residents a shot at landing the jobs.
