Amazon Web Services (AWS) is looking to expand its data center footprint in Oregon.
As reported by Oregon Live, the company is in the process of securing 400 acres in Arlington for a data center project.
According to the company, it could still be many years until it is actually operating a site in Arlington due to the process of getting permits, electricity, and negotiating tax breaks for the site. The cloud giant is already operating data centers in Morrow and Umatilla counties in Oregon.
Arlington's Mayor, Jeffery Bufton, said regarding the project: "It’s going to be an enhanced growth spurt for us, and we’re actually quite excited about it. We won’t end up being just a truck stop on the highway.”
Amazon bought an initial 376 acres on a mesa above Arlington in the summer of 2024 for $10 million and is buying an additional 30 acres in the Port of Arlington for $3 million.
According to Oregon Live, the city and the port have been working together to prepare the properties for development for over a decade.
AWS' VP of global data centers, Kevin Miller, told Oregon Live that Arlington's proximity to its existing locations in Oregon makes it ideal from a latency perspective. He added that the land acquisition is the first step, but declined to give a timeline on when building may commence.
Amazon has had a data center presence in Oregon for a number of years. It began building in Boardman in Morrow County around 2011, and expanded in Hermiston, in nearby Umatilla County, from around 2017. The company operates its US West (Oregon) region from those data centers. According to the Oregon Live report, on those existing data centers Amazon receives nearly $100 million in tax breaks annually.
Arlington is a small city around 140 miles east of Portland and 27 miles west of Boardman, Oregon's two main data center hotspots. The city sits on the Columbia River which borders Oregon and Washington state.
Amazon signed a PPA with Avangrid in February 2024 to procure the power output from a wind farm in Oregon. The Amazon Wind Farm Oregon – aka Leaning Juniper IIA – was said to have a capacity of 98.4MW generated by 40 turbines.
