This "Alley" isn't transforming struggling west Mesa and it's nowhere near the light-rail line. Instead, it's centered on the "Elliott Avenue Technology Corridor" in far southeast Mesa, the location of agriculture, desert, and the former Williams Air Force Base. Now, with abundant concrete, gravel, and asphalt, it will expand the increasingly dangerous Phoenix urban heat island. The "Corridor" is entirely car dependent.
Data centers are lowest on the ladder of the tech economy: necessary, but bringing few jobs — much less high-end jobs — and several headaches. This is why they are usually found in rural areas desperate to replace their lost millwork, manufacturing, or railroad jobs. States and localities shell out huge incentives and disappointment follows.
But to see the proliferation of data centers in a city the size of Mesa (518,000 in 2019), in the 10th most populous metropolitan area in the nation, is curious.
A Google data center for Mesa announced in 2019, lured with tax breaks, would create few permanent jobs. Even the much-hyped Apple "global command center" is merely a big data center, promising only 150 full-time positions.By comparison, Amazon's headquarters in downtown Seattle holds more than 50,000 high-paid executive and software engineer jobs. At nearby Redmond, Microsoft has 54,000 employees at its headquarters. Every major Big Tech firm from Silicon Valley has major operations there (no data centers). This is the headwaters of high tech.
Another problem with Data Center Alley: These massive server farms are water hogs. Elsewhere, they contribute to climate change because of their enormous appetite for electricity. Maybe Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station helps Mesa here. It's only built upwind of the nation's fifth most populous city.
And no evidence has emerged that data centers are a gateway to more advanced tech work. Metro Phoenix got nowhere in its bid for Amazon HQ2. Any "exodus" from the Bay Area has benefited an established center of quality, Austin. Google is building a transformative new campus in downtown San Jose, close to light rail and commuter trains to San Francisco. The best talent digs great cities.
Read more closely and it's clear that Mesa's "technology corridor" is yet another Arizona real-estate hustle, dependent on cheap farmland and tilt-up buildings, plus a heapin' helping of tax breaks — in a state that ranks second from last in per-student funding.
"It may never rival Silicon Valley...." It couldn't. Silicon Valley is sui generis, with no rival in the world. The former Valley of Heart's Delight became the world leader in high tech because of proximity to world-class universities and talent, the emergence of top companies, serial entrepreneurs, the greatest concentration of angel and venture capital on the planet, and a history of innovation that dates back to "the traitorous eight" who founded such pillars as Intel.
Sunshine, the real-estate Ponzi scheme, and a flat tax leaves you in a blind alley."
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