Doug Tate, founder and CEO of Alpha Technologies, announces the development of a 60,000-square-foot data center at 1125 6th Ave. during a news conference on Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024, at Huntington City Hall.
Doug Tate, founder and CEO of Alpha Technologies, announces the development of a 60,000-square-foot data center at 1125 6th Ave. during a news conference on Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024, at Huntington City Hall.
Downtown Huntington received a much-needed boost Wednesday when Alpha Technologies announced it will build a tier 3 data center in the former Appalachian Power Co. building at 1125 6th Ave.
ItÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s a $10 million investment by the company based in Hurricane. The 60,000-square foot data center will provide redundancy to AlphaÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s existing operations in South Charleston, currently the stateÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s largest commercial data center. The South Charleston facility hosts data services for federal, state and local governments, major health care providers, educational institutions and businesses of varying sizes.
Data centers are ranked on tiers from 1 to 4, with 4 being the highest. A tier 3 center has multiple paths for power and cooling, and it has systems in place to allow updates and maintenance without taking it offline. A tier 3 center is expected to have less than two hours of down time annually.
Work on the data center will begin in mid-November, and the first phase of the project is to be completed by March 2025. Over the next few years, Alpha Technologies will invest more than $20 million in support of the data center, said Doug Tate, AlphaÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s founder and CEO.
The data center is expected to employ 30-35 people in the information technology sector such as software development, communications, infrastructure and fiber, Tate said. The top floor of the data center will be developed as a training center.
Tate said Alpha Technologies has seen the current and potential growth in Huntington, which was a leading reason for the partnership.
ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥œWe call it the pull-through effect, which is the more businesses that move in, the more businesses will follow, so if we create a fiber infrastructure starting with the data center, Thundercloud (broadband fiber project) and the fiber and we create the infrastructure or the highway to support those businesses. ItÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s not about streets anymore. ItÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s about the superhighway,ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥ Tate said.
Mayor Steve Williams said the cityÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s efforts in expanding broadband and Alpha TechnologiesÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™ planned data center will give tech businesses the opportunity to grow roots in Huntington as well as help neighboring communities.
ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥œWe are the digital hub for this region of Appalachia, and this is the example that is being set that others will be seeking to follow,ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥ he said.
The planned data center will provide spinoff jobs and more opportunities for the city as well as educational institutions such as Marshall University, Mountwest Community & Technical College, and Cabell and Wayne county schools, Williams said.
Indeed, the data center could be the boost the downtown area needs. Downtown Huntington is far from being a ghost town, but itÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s far from being what it once was. Downtown needs high-value economic activity, preferably in the private sector. Senior housing and entertainment venues are nice. Private-sector investment that brings the world to Huntington is much better.
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