UTAH
From Site Selection magazine, May 2009
The Daybreak Corporate Center at Rio Tinto's 4,100-acre (1,660-hectare) Daybreak development in South Jordan is Utah's first LEED-Platinum building. Most of the 175,000-sq.-ft. (16,260-sq.-m.) building houses employees of Rio Tinto, a leading mining and exploration company, its Kennecott Land subsidiary and Kennecott Utah Copper. Online auctioneer eBay is building a new, state-of-the-art data center elsewhere on the Daybreak property that will also be LEED-certified.
Data Center Takes LEED Hints From Auctioneer's HQ
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nternet marketplace eBay Inc. plans to add 50 jobs to its Salt Lake City area work force when it opens a new data center in the Kennecott Daybreak Corporate Center in South Jordan.
The San Jose, Calif.-based company currently employs about 1,000 in the metro area primarily in customer service roles. Announced in December 2008, the facility will be the first of its next-generation data centers designed to make the latest in data center and blade-server technology available to its 400 million users globally in an environmentally sensitive way.
Some LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) features of eBay's new headquarters in San Jose, which opened in May 2008, will likely find their way into the new Utah data center. The new LEED-Gold headquarters building is situated on eBay's North Campus, which features more than 3,200 solar panels covering 60,000 sq. ft. (5,570 sq. m.) of roof. The panels supply 18 percent of the campus's power with a 650-kW system.
Workstation lighting uses a dimming system that automatically dims based on the amount of sunlight entering the building, saving 39 percent of the energy normally used in the building for lighting. Low-flow showerheads and low-flow faucets have been installed to help reduce the amount of water used by 30 percent. Eco-friendly irrigation systems are also being installed and will reduce water use by approximately 30 percent. Lastly, more than 75 percent of the waste from the construction site was recycled, reused or otherwise diverted from landfill.
Treading Lightly
"When we go to build infrastructure, we look at ways to lessen the footprint of the building and operations," says Jose Mallabo, eBay's director of corporate communications. The same environmentally sound project approach will be applied to the new data center, he asserts.
Mallabo says eBay considered sites "in two or three other states" but decided to expand its presence in the Salt Lake City area. A California location was ruled out "for a lot of reasons," he says, including the fact that "a data center is about security and redundancy from the core headquarters."
Kennecott Land, a subsidiary of mining concern Rio Tinto and developer of the 4,100-acre (1,660-hectare) Daybreak community, is helping set the sustainability pace with its LEED-Platinum certified, 175,000-sq.-ft. (16,260-sq.-m.) Daybreak Corporate Center. Open since December 2008, the building is the first to achieve LEED-Platinum status in Utah.
tah has the best economic outlook in the country, according to a recently released report, "Rich States, Poor States: ALEC-Laffer State Economic Competitiveness Index," from the American Legislative Exchange Council (www.alec.org). In fact, it did last year, as well, which was the first year ALEC released the index. ALEC is an association of state legislators dedicated to advancing the principles of free markets, limited government and federalism. Completing the top five states are Utah's next-door neighbors Colorado and Arizona, followed by Virginia and South Dakota.
The index ranks states according to 15 economic variables. They are, with Utah's rank in parentheses: top marginal personal income tax rate (17); top marginal corporate income tax rate (8); personal income tax progressivity, or change in tax liability per $1,000 of income (2); property tax burden (13); sales tax burden (38); remaining tax burden (17); whether estate/inheritance tax is levied (No/1); recently legislated tax changes (12); debt service as a share of tax revenue (33); public employees per 10,000 of population, full-time equivalent (6); state liability system survey, or tort litigation treatment, judicial impartiality and so forth (5); state minimum wage (1); average workers' compensation costs (6); whether or not a right-to-work state (Yes/1); and number of tax or expenditure limits (13).
Getting it Right
"In stark contrast to way too many states today that are getting it wrong in terms of policy and business friendliness, Utah is unique in that its leaders are making some very conscientious decisions to improve their business climate and to make it clear they are open for business and are not going to tax you out of existence," says Jonathan Williams, ALEC's director of tax and fiscal policy and a co-author of the report. Noted economist Dr. Arthur B. Laffer and The Wall Street Journal's senior economics writer, Stephen Moore, are the other co-authors." States that rank well in our outlook will rebound faster from the downturn than the states at the bottom."
Recent developments in Utah signal a policy change, he adds, including reducing the personal income tax several points to a 5-percent flat tax and making the corporate tax rate 5 percent as well. Utah does not levy a "death tax," and it is a right-to-work state, both of which boost the state's competitiveness.
Williams says momentum is building in Utah to eliminate the income taxes, which would make it more competitive with states, such as Nevada, that already have done so.
"We compare the nine states without personal income taxes with the nine states with the highest income taxes – and we do the same with corporate income taxes – and then look at economic growth down the line, and the states without income taxes prosper in more economic categories than those with the highest income taxes," Williams says. "During an economic downturn, states that have no or flat income taxes will not be hit nearly as hard in terms of revenues as states with steeply progressive income taxes, like California, for instance. That's why there's such a devastating fiscal rollercoaster there. It's not a stable source of revenue. We give high marks to states that can avoid that."
The San Jose, Calif.-based company currently employs about 1,000 in the metro area primarily in customer service roles. Announced in December 2008, the facility will be the first of its next-generation data centers designed to make the latest in data center and blade-server technology available to its 400 million users globally in an environmentally sensitive way.
Some LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) features of eBay's new headquarters in San Jose, which opened in May 2008, will likely find their way into the new Utah data center. The new LEED-Gold headquarters building is situated on eBay's North Campus, which features more than 3,200 solar panels covering 60,000 sq. ft. (5,570 sq. m.) of roof. The panels supply 18 percent of the campus's power with a 650-kW system.
Workstation lighting uses a dimming system that automatically dims based on the amount of sunlight entering the building, saving 39 percent of the energy normally used in the building for lighting. Low-flow showerheads and low-flow faucets have been installed to help reduce the amount of water used by 30 percent. Eco-friendly irrigation systems are also being installed and will reduce water use by approximately 30 percent. Lastly, more than 75 percent of the waste from the construction site was recycled, reused or otherwise diverted from landfill.
Treading Lightly
Mallabo says eBay considered sites "in two or three other states" but decided to expand its presence in the Salt Lake City area. A California location was ruled out "for a lot of reasons," he says, including the fact that "a data center is about security and redundancy from the core headquarters."
Kennecott Land, a subsidiary of mining concern Rio Tinto and developer of the 4,100-acre (1,660-hectare) Daybreak community, is helping set the sustainability pace with its LEED-Platinum certified, 175,000-sq.-ft. (16,260-sq.-m.) Daybreak Corporate Center. Open since December 2008, the building is the first to achieve LEED-Platinum status in Utah.
What's Behind Utah's Rosy Economic Prospects
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Jonathan Williams, Director, Tax and Fiscal Policy, American Legislative Exchange Council
The index ranks states according to 15 economic variables. They are, with Utah's rank in parentheses: top marginal personal income tax rate (17); top marginal corporate income tax rate (8); personal income tax progressivity, or change in tax liability per $1,000 of income (2); property tax burden (13); sales tax burden (38); remaining tax burden (17); whether estate/inheritance tax is levied (No/1); recently legislated tax changes (12); debt service as a share of tax revenue (33); public employees per 10,000 of population, full-time equivalent (6); state liability system survey, or tort litigation treatment, judicial impartiality and so forth (5); state minimum wage (1); average workers' compensation costs (6); whether or not a right-to-work state (Yes/1); and number of tax or expenditure limits (13).
Getting it Right
Recent developments in Utah signal a policy change, he adds, including reducing the personal income tax several points to a 5-percent flat tax and making the corporate tax rate 5 percent as well. Utah does not levy a "death tax," and it is a right-to-work state, both of which boost the state's competitiveness.
Williams says momentum is building in Utah to eliminate the income taxes, which would make it more competitive with states, such as Nevada, that already have done so.
"We compare the nine states without personal income taxes with the nine states with the highest income taxes – and we do the same with corporate income taxes – and then look at economic growth down the line, and the states without income taxes prosper in more economic categories than those with the highest income taxes," Williams says. "During an economic downturn, states that have no or flat income taxes will not be hit nearly as hard in terms of revenues as states with steeply progressive income taxes, like California, for instance. That's why there's such a devastating fiscal rollercoaster there. It's not a stable source of revenue. We give high marks to states that can avoid that."
– Mark Arend
Site Selection Online – The magazine of Corporate Real Estate Strategy and Area Economic Development.
©2009 Conway Data, Inc. All rights reserved. SiteNet data is from many sources and not warranted to be accurate or current.
©2009 Conway Data, Inc. All rights reserved. SiteNet data is from many sources and not warranted to be accurate or current.