Apple seems to have started work on its data center at Oregon. The exact location of the data center is Prineville, Oregon. Oregon is home to about 9000 people, and also houses massive data center owned by internet giant Facebook.

Apple bought this piece of land at Prineville for $5.6 million. Apple’s choice of selecting Prineville as a location for its data center apart from the dry air environment conducive for cooling, is the exemption from paying a hefty property tax. This exemption has been exchanged for Cupertino’s promise to invest at least a quarter of a billion dollars in the facility and employ a minimum of 35 people.

Portland’s daily tabloid ‘Oregonian reports’ reported that the first phase of construction is estimated to be $68 million. This would include the construction of first of two 338,000 sq ft buildings, and two data halls. The plan is to have 16 data halls in each building.

The Oregonian Reports also noted that Apple’s data center is going to be twice the size of a regular Costco store. Considering the size of the costco store to be around 141,000 sq ft, Apple is likely to outdo its other data centers with respect to the area.

Prineville, home to Apple’s new data center is located 20 miles from Redmond. Prineville is also home to Facebook’s first ever company owned, custom built data center which started operations in January 2011.

Apple has confirmed that the center would completely run on 100% renewable energy, considering the growing demands of eco friendly energy.

“At Prineville we have access to enough local renewable energy sources to completely meet the needs of the facility,” the Cupertinians say on their website.

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