Apple has finally filed for planning permission for its long-planned data center in Iowa.
The company requested permission for one ~315,000 sq ft (~29,300 sqm) data center building alongside administration, network, and storage facilities, and could build up to six data center buildings on the campus in the future.
The project, listed as ‘Morgan’ on the Waukee council site, was approved by local planning officials this week.
“It is an almost $1.4 billion dollar project over the next several years, and that has a lot of impact from a commercial valuation perspective for the City of Waukee,” Mayor Courtney Clarke said.
While Waukee Planning and Zoning Commission approved the plans, the project will now move on to the Waukee City Council for a final vote next month. If approved, KCCI reports development could begin as early as this coming spring.
"We always see development breeds other development and we fully anticipate as Apple begins to build out, there will be other like-minded businesses that will locate in the city," said Brad Deets, assistant city manager of Waukee.
“We are proud to be part of the community in Waukee, and of our many contributions to the city, including contributing more than $5.5 million to local projects like the new Triumph Park. Our new data center will create hundreds of local jobs and we look forward to breaking ground in the coming months,” Apple told WeAreIowa.
Apple first announced its intentions in 2017, saying at the time the facility was due to be brought online in 2020. It seems at some point the project was changed to August 2022, before the company put in a request in 2019 with the Iowa Economic Development Authority to extend the deadline to finish the facility another five years and push the completion date to August 2027.
In April 2021 the tech giant said this week that the facility had entered the design phase, more than four years after it was first announced and a year after it was originally due to come into operation.
The facility was first announced as a 400,000 sq ft (37,000 sqm) data center and an investment of $1.3 billion. The filed plans show one 315,773 square foot (29,300 sqm) data center building on the site on Hickman Road alongside a 63,349 sq ft (5,600 sqm) administration building, a 10,511 sq ft (975 sqm) maintenance building, and three network distribution buildings totaling 2,210 sq ft (200 sqm).
Future data center buildings are planned - possibly up to five - but will require additional site plan approvals. Assuming similar designs, the campus could total almost 1.9 million sq ft (176,000 sqm) of data center buildings at full build out.
In 2018, Apple announced plans to spend more than $10 billion on US data centers over the following five years as part of its previous spending commitment. It's unclear if the company has met that goal, and hasn’t made such a specific commitment since.
Apple has faced a number of troubles around data centers in recent years. In 2018, the company canceled plans to build a data center in Ireland after legal troubles and local resistance to the project. The land was put up for sale, but last year the company quietly filed to extend its planning permission for a data center at that site. It's not clear if it wants to start the project again, or if it is just trying to increase the value of the land before a potential sale. The news brought more legal challenges from those opposed to the development.
Another data center, its second facility in Denmark, was also canceled. Apple at the time said it wished to focus on the now-complete Viborg facility. Despite issues with contractors, Apple completed work on the Viborg facility in 2019, and has invested in two of the world’s largest onshore wind turbines to power it.
Expansions to its Reno, Nevada data center have seemingly gone to plan without interruptions, as have plans to build a second data center in China. In 2020, T5 acquired a data center in Newark, San Jose that is thought to previously belong to Apple.
