Last month, Google committed to invest an additional $2.3 billion into its three Central Ohio datacenter campuses.
Google Cloud’s Vice President of North America Partner Ecosystem and Channels, Jim Anderson, made the announcement on June 18 at a ceremony in Columbus’ Far South Side neighborhood. Several state and local government officials and business leaders were also in attendance.
Google’s datacenters run its many worldwide services, which include its search engine, Gmail, Maps, YouTube and other cloud-based services.
For members of the area’s building trades, the news means more jobs.
Dorsey Hager, Executive Secretary-Treasurer of the Columbus/Central Ohio Building and Construction Trades Council, is excited about how the additional Google work will impact Central Ohio.
“Google’s commitment to Columbus and the Central Ohio market continues to create career opportunities in the building trades for members of our community,” Hager said.
He noted that Google’s work is being performed under a Community Benefits Agreement, which has helped create jobs for members of Central Ohio’s underserved communities and put them on a pathway to a middle-class lifestyle.
He said the details related to the additional work, project timelines and number of construction jobs created are not known at this point. Hager expects to learn those details in the next couple of months but stressed that his affiliated members are ready for the opportunities.
The June announcement adds to the roughly $4.4 billion Google has already committed to spend in Ohio since 2019, when the tech giant broke ground on its first datacenter campus.
Two years later, the company publicized plans to expand the New Albany campus at a cost of over $1 billion. Last year, Google committed an additional $1.7 billion to the Buckeye State.
Ongoing Central Ohio megaprojects
The announcement is the latest in a series of billion-dollar datacenter investments in Central Ohio over the past year, including Microsoft’s $3 billion campus in Hebron (Licking County), where the software company plans to build up to six datacenters.
Amazon is currently building its Central Ohio campuses, including a $7.8 billion expansion of its datacenter operations in the Columbus area and a site in Pickaway County, where 234 acres were acquired.
“Our members will keep building these datacenters that are essential to our local economy, continuing the growth of the Silicon Heartland,” Hager said.
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