Prineville, the small Oregon town that became well known in the tech world after Facebook decided to build its first company-owned data center there, may become a home to more data centers in the near future.

Prineville City Manager Steve Forrester told DatacenterDynamics that the city government has been approached by agents of technology companies in the process of site selection for data center builds. Names of the companies were not disclosed.

"We have had ongoing dialogue with two different  technology- , data center-type businesses recently," Forrester said. "They're interested enough to be talking go us."

Nothing has been said to indicate any definitive decision to locate another data center in Prineville, he added.

Contrary to an earlier report by a local news organization, Forrester said the agents the city had held discussions with did not reveal any "code names" for the two potential projects.

Forrester said the city would welcome more data center construction. Both city and Crook County officials have done a lot of work to create conditions at other sites similar to those that made Facebook's site attractive to the social-networking company.

"We are primed and ready to go," Forrester said.

Attributes that made the location attractive for Facebook included availability of relatively inexpensive energy, water and dark fiber. The site was also "shovel-ready", according to a past DatacenterDynamics interview with Ken Patchett, who oversaw construction of the facility for Facebook.

When a site is shovel-ready, it has been pre-approved for certain uses, such as industrial-facility development. A company that buys a shovel-ready site does not have to undergo often lengthy and expensive environmental-review and other permitting processes usually associated with large development projects.