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MESA, AZ (3TV/CBS 5) — Google is launching its first physical presence in the Valley by building a $600 million data center in Mesa.

On Wednesday, the tech giant announced that it’ll bring technical infrastructure to help support the company’s efforts in artificial intelligence and cloud business computing. Google adds that the new data center will help power things like Google Search, Gmail, Maps, Google Cloud, and other products and services. Executives from Google were joined by Gov. Katie Hobbs, Rep. Greg Stanton, and Mesa Mayor John Giles.

“Google’s investment in Arizona will be critical for the Mesa community and our state’s economy,” Governor Katie Hobbs said. “Arizona continues to attract global technology leaders due to our skilled workforce, dynamic economy, and focus on innovation. We are proud to welcome Google to Arizona and look forward to the many opportunities this partnership will bring.”

Mesa will be the first city in Arizona to have Google Fiber

As the tech world continues to expand rapidly, Google is adding a Google Cloud region to Phoenix to bring cloud technologies closer to local customers. Those efforts will help deliver digital services faster and more reliably to Arizonans.

“We are proud to put down roots in Arizona with both the data center in Mesa and the Phoenix cloud region,” said Joe Kava, VP of Data Centers at Google. “Not only do data centers help keep digital services up and running for people and businesses, they are economic anchors in the communities where we operate. We are appreciative of the continued partnership with the local leadership across the state.”

Google says that last year, $11.4 billion in economic activity was generated for tens of thousands of Arizona businesses.

What about water use?

The new data center will reportedly use state-of-the-art technology to limit water usage, according to Google’s press release. “This strategy prioritizes minimizing net climate impact and using natural resources responsibly, both today and in the future,” the statement says. “In line with this approach, the Mesa data center will make use of air-cooled technology.” Google also references in commitment to reducing its energy use, adding that since 2017, the company says it has worked to match its energy usage with an equal amount of renewable energy to offset the impact.

Sarah Porter, director of Arizona State University’s Kyl Center for Water Policy, says it won’t hurt farmers and shouldn’t impact the city’s water supply.

“Beyond its operations, Google is committed to improving local watershed health where its office campuses and data centers are located and replenish 120% of the water it consumes, on average,” company officials wrote in the news release. The company recently gave $150,000 to the Salt River Project to help watershed restoration efforts and assist with wildfire risk reduction.

Details on when the data site will be operational haven’t been released. For more information on Google in Arizona, click/tap here.

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PHOENIX — Tech giant Google will make its first physical imprint in the Valley with a $600 million data center set to be built in Mesa.

The data center will power digital services such as Google Search, Gmail, Maps and Google Cloud, and others for worldwide consumption.

A new Google Cloud region was also announced to come to Phoenix, which will bring more reliable and faster digital services to local customers.

“We are proud to put down roots in Arizona with both the data center in Mesa and the Phoenix cloud region,” Joe Kava, vice president of Data Centers for Google, said.

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“Not only do data centers help keep digital services up and running for people and businesses, they are economic anchors in the communities where we operate. We are appreciative of the continued partnership with the local leadership across the state.”

Construction on the center, located at Elliot and Sossaman roads, is slated to start in early 2024 and will take at least a year, according to Kava.

About 1,200 jobs will be created as a result of the construction, Kava said.

The Mesa City Council OK’d the project in 2019.

“The city of Mesa is thrilled to welcome Google to our community,” Mesa Mayor John Giles said.

“Google’s decision to designate Mesa as the home for its first facility in Arizona underscores its profound confidence in our city and residents.”

The center will not use water-based cooling but rather “state-of-the-art” air cooling, according to a press release.

Google services provided more than $11.4 billion of economic activity to Arizona businesses, nonprofits, publishers, creators and developers in 2022, the release said.

“Google’s investment in Arizona will be critical for the Mesa community and our state’s economy,” Gov. Katie Hobbs said.

“Arizona continues to attract global technology leaders due to our skilled workforce, dynamic economy and focus on innovation. We are proud to welcome Google to Arizona and look forward to the many opportunities this partnership will bring.”

KTAR News 92.3 FM’s Colton Krolak contributed to this report.

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Google revealed its plans on Wednesday for its long-awaited large data center campus in southeast Mesa.

Early construction started on Google's data center nearly two months ago on the northwest corner of Sossaman and Elliot roads. On Wednesday, Google was joined by Gov. Katie Hobbs, Mesa Mayor John Giles, Rep. Greg Stanton and other community leaders to draw attention to the data center project, which represents an investment of about $600 million by the company.

The data center, which will be air-cooled, will power the company's consumer-facing tools including Search, Gmail, Maps, Google Cloud and ongoing artificial intelligence innovation.

The company began construction on the data center in July, though no timeline for completion was offered at the time.

Joe Kava, Google's VP of Data Centers, said Google expects to start building vertically near the beginning of 2024 and be completed by early 2025. The company is also looking to buy other large parcels of land that it can grow into over the years.

According to a site plan, the first phase calls for a 288,530-square-foot data center building with a utility switchyard, a medium voltage substation that services the data center, a security kiosk, public road improvements and an employee office building, according to project documents.

Kava said about 1,200 construction workers will be on-site working to build out the data center.

Google had signed a 25-year government property lease excise tax, or GPLET, with the city of Mesa in July 2019 to assist in purchasing the more than 185 acres for the data center. The GPLET agreement put Google on the clock to complete the construction of the first phase of the data center by July 2025.

Per a development agreement with Mesa, Google must also spend $600 million in capital expenditures by then, which matches the value of the data center that Google announced on Wednesday.

Google also announced that the Valley will be home to a Google Cloud region, joining nine other markets in the country. Google expects the Cloud will help local customers, which range from businesses of all sizes to public sector entities, in delivering digital services more reliably and at higher speeds.

Future performance metrics at the Google campus include:

Kava said Google wanted to build a data center in Mesa because of available land, a talented workforce and because it felt welcomed by local and state officials.

"Google's investment in Arizona will be critical for the Mesa community and our state's economy,” Hobbs said in a statement. “Arizona continues to attract global technology leaders due to our skilled workforce, dynamic economy and focus on innovation. We are proud to welcome Google to Arizona and look forward to the many opportunities this partnership will bring.”

The city of Mesa and Google worked with the Salt River Project, Arizona Commerce Authority and Greater Phoenix Economic Council for nearly a year before Mesa City Council unanimously approved the deal in July 2019, according to previous reporting.

Google will join other major employers including Apple and Meta Platforms Inc. that already have data centers within Mesa's Elliot Road Technology Corridor.

Other companies such as Virginia-based EdgeConneX, Utah-based Novva Data Centers and others have their eyes on developing data centers throughout Mesa.

Bill Jabjiniak, Mesa's economic development director, said the city's infrastructure has attracted data center companies, particularly from colocate ones that provide space for several users, which is unlike the data center Google is building.

Jabjiniak said, moving forward, there could be a slowdown in data center expansions within Mesa as there will be a preference by the city for developments that will bring more jobs.

"The council has set a strategic direction for me to really focus on more jobs and high-quality jobs," he said.

Giles reiterated that the explosion of data center development in Mesa will likely be reined in overtime in favor of advanced manufacturing jobs that assist in the supply chain for chip and electric vehicle manufacturing.

Data centers are notorious water guzzlers. Google says the new building will be air-cooled.

MESA, Ariz. — You could search for water at Google's planned $600 million data center in Mesa.

But you wouldn't get many results.

"The only water we're going to use on the whole campus is just for the office area," said Joe Kava, the executive who oversees Google's data centers worldwide.

"In the bathrooms and things like that to wash your hands."

Kava announced the company's new data center Wednesday with a surprise that drew applause: The giant server farm will be air-cooled - no water needed.

"When we go into any new community, we spend a lot of time evaluating the health of the watershed," Kava told reporters after the announcement.

"Our philosophy is to do no harm to the watershed."

The search engine giant's announcement in downtown Mesa was attended by Gov. Katie Hobbs, Congressman Greg Stanton and Mesa Mayor John Giles.

Data centers store all our digital stuff - emails, selfies, videos.

The data storage units demand massive amounts of energy and water, to run and cool them. In Arizona, that demand collides with the growing scarcity of water.

Kava declined to say how Google's air-cooling worked.

"My innovation team has been working on how we can use air-cooled solutions and make them as cost-effective as water-cooled," he said.

The Valley is fast becoming America's storage unit for the digital data we create.

By one measure, there are four dozen data centers in the state.

This will be Mesa's third data center.

Apple has been up and running for several years; Facebook parent Meta's data center is still under construction. All are in the Elliot Road Technology Corridor in east Mesa.

Sarah Porter, director of Arizona State University's Kyl Center for Water Policy, said that despite the extreme heat and drought, there were good reasons to build a data center in Arizona.

"While it may get really hot, we have a very stable climate," Porter said in an interview.

"We don't have earthquakes, we don't have hurricanes. We don't have devastating blizzards. And people want their data to be available when they need it."

But Porter said cities were starting to push back on the water demands of data centers.

"We have places where data centers want to build saying, 'Listen, the water's too big a problem, we have to figure something else out,'" she said.

"Now we're seeing data center builders coming in proposing to use no water or very low water cooling methods."

Porter also points out there's no free lunch.

Zero water use could mean a greater reliance on electricity to air-cool the data center. And electricity production itself relies on water.

The way Porter looks at it, all our data has a "water footprint."

"We all are pretty careless about our data storage," she said.

"You take a photo, it goes off to the Cloud, and that photo has a tiny water footprint. We don't think very much about that. But collectively, those footprints can be significant."

Google said construction of the data center could start by the beginning of 2024. An estimated 1,200 construction workers would be hired.

The company didn't provide any information on permanent jobs or salaries. Data centers are not large job generators.

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Google broke ground on a new $600 million data center in Mesa, and will use state-of-the-art technology to air cool the facility. This will be the company’s first physical presence in the state. Governor Katie Hobbs, Mesa Mayor John Giles, and other community leaders joined Google in celebrating the announcement during an event Wednesday in Mesa.

Google’s continued investment in technical infrastructure, including its data centers, plays a critical role in supporting the company’s AI innovations and growing Cloud business. The new Mesa data center will help power popular digital services – like Google Search, Gmail, Maps, Google Cloud, and others – for people and organizations worldwide. Other industries rely on data center computing power as well–including healthcare, the public sector, manufacturing, financial services, retail and more–in order to serve customers and provide key services to local communities.

DEEPER DIVE: Here’s why data center demand continues to outpace supply in Metro Phoenix

To support its growing customer base, Google also announced a new Google Cloud region is coming to Phoenix to complement its existing network of regions around the world. The new Phoenix cloud region will bring Google Cloud technologies closer to local customers — ranging from small, medium and large businesses to public sector entities and other organizations — to help them deliver digital services to their own users more reliably and at higher speeds.

“Google’s investment in Arizona will be critical for the Mesa community and our state’s economy,” said Governor Katie Hobbs. “Arizona continues to attract global technology leaders due to our skilled workforce, dynamic economy and focus on innovation. We are proud to welcome Google to Arizona and look forward to the many opportunities this partnership will bring.”

“Thanks to years of hard work and targeted investments—in our STEM workforce, critical infrastructure and water conservation—the East Valley has become a premier destination for tech giants and startups alike,” said Representative Greg Stanton. “Google’s new data operations center means hundreds of high-tech, high-wage jobs for Mesans, and I couldn’t be more excited to welcome them to our state.”

“The City of Mesa is thrilled to welcome Google to our community,” said Mesa Mayor John Giles. “Google’s decision to designate Mesa as the home for its first facility in Arizona underscores its profound confidence in our city and residents.”

In 2022, Google services provided more than $11.4 billion of economic activity for tens of thousands of Arizona businesses, nonprofits, publishers, creators and developers.

“We are proud to put down roots in Arizona with both the data center in Mesa and the Phoenix cloud region,” said Joe Kava, VP, Data Centers, Google. “Not only do data centers help keep digital services up and running for people and businesses, they are economic anchors in the communities where we operate. We are appreciative of the continued partnership with the local leadership across the state.”

Since 2017, Google has matched 100% of its annual electricity use with renewable energy. Today, the company is pursuing net-zero emissions across its operations and value chain by 2030, supported by an ambitious clean energy goal to run all its offices, data centers and cloud regions on carbon-free energy every hour of every day.

An important piece of this clean energy goal is Google’s climate-conscious approach to cooling data centers. This strategy prioritizes minimizing net climate impact and using natural resources responsibly, both today and in the future. In line with this approach, the Mesa data center will make use of air-cooled technology.

Beyond its operations, Google is committed to improving local watershed health where its office campuses and data centers are located and replenish 120% of the water it consumes, on average. As part of its commitment in Arizona, Google is announcing a $150,000 donation to help fund Salt River Project’s (SRP) effort focused on watershed restoration and wildfire risk reduction for surrounding rural communities. SRP is the largest provider of water to the Phoenix metropolitan area serving about 2.5 million people.

“We are committed to focusing our water stewardship efforts in water-scarce regions like Arizona,” said Kate Franko, Public Affairs Manager, Google. “This collaboration with SRP builds on our 2021 investment in the Colorado River Indian Tribes’ (CRIT) system conservation and canal lining project to improve water conservation in the Southwest.”

Learn more about Google in Arizona here.