Ohio is getting its second-largest private sector investment ever – a year and a half after the biggest one in state history.
Amazon Web Services will spend $7.8 billion by 2029 to expand its data center operations in central Ohio. This deal is second only to Intel’s record-setting $20 billion project announced last year to build two computer chip manufacturing facilities in Licking County.
Lt. Gov. Jon Husted said the Amazon expansion will create hundreds of jobs, but wasn’t specific on how much the state had to put up to secure the project.
"This is not one where we had to offer a lot of incentives," Husted said. "The interesting thing about a data center is that it doesn't create a lot of direct jobs in the sense of what, say, an Intel would. But what it does do is creates a lot of business for other companies, like HVAC companies, security companies, all of the companies, smaller companies throughout Ohio who will serve these data centers."
Amazon hasn’t announced exactly where and how big the expansion will be.
Husted does admit that along with these huge developments, there will be other investments that will have to be made to keep up.
"This is not something we're accustomed to. We've went through decades upon decades of seeing businesses leave our state," Husted said. "Now we've gone through a period here as of late, where in the last five years we've had companies moving from all over the globe to Ohio because we're great at making things here and we've proven ourselves worthy of being a tech hub. And so that's going to mean, though, more housing, it's going to mean more infrastructure, and all of those issues need to be dealt with at the state and local level."
As of Monday afternoon, several hours after the announcement of the deal, the value of the incentives the state has approved through the Tax Credit Authority was unclear.
