Apple has received a major endorsement for its planned data center development in Reno, Nevada – a US$89m tax break.

According to news agency Associated Press (AP), which quoted Nevada’s head of the Governor’s Office of Economic Development Steve Hill, the state is keen to entice similar developments to Reno.

Already one company – NJVC, which traditionally provides IT services to the government and is expanding into the healthcare and financial services industries – has launched a data center in the city of Reno.

It’s two-storey facility used to house the systems of defence supplier BEA systems, will eventually be moved to a new data center it plans to locate at the Reno Technology park, the same park Apple said it has earmarked for a large data center campus.

The park promotes access to numerous sources of electricity with feeds reaching across state lines and into Canada and its developers, the Unique Infrastructure Group, told FOCUS earlier this year they are in talks to purchase a nearby natural-gas-fuelled power plant that could feed in 240MW.

Apple said it plans to launch 15MW of capacity at the park in 2012 to 2013, and plans to increase this by 5MW each year until it reaches 35MW in 2016-2017.

The tax follows the passing in of a state law last year which provides the state’s economic development agency executive director wide discretion to negotiate such deals – a move Hill said was integral to securing Apple’s major investment.

“If we had not implemented that statute we would not have Apple here,” Hill told AP.