Meta to build $800M data center in Rosemount, Minnesota

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, announced plans to build a new data center in Rosemount, Minnesota. The more than 700,000 square foot center will be located along County Road 42, just east of the Dakota County Technical College.

During an announcement Thursday, officials revealed the project had been under wraps for several years. They called the secret project "Project Bigfoot."

This will exist roughly a mile from my house.

It’s a lot of feelings, to be sure.

A quibble I have with this report is that I’m not entirely sure we can say with a straight face that Meta is a great representative of “emerging tech”. What does that phrase even mean?

But maybe I’m just being a NIMBY. A hundred jobs at this data center isn’t bad, Minnesota’s cold season¹ is perfect for naturally cooling these systems, and the folks I know who work at the city are extremely capable and thorough; they would not let something like this go through if they didn’t do their diligence regarding impacts to our various shared infrastructure.

So I guess, uh, welcome, Meta? I hope y’all do, as our Iowan neighbors reportedly claim, “step up.”