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The Governor's Office of Economic Development still believes business software giant Oracle Corp. will finish a $313 million data center in West Jordan, even though construction ground to a stop soon after it started.
Work ended in late March after a public ground-breaking in November, but Oracle executives didn't notify the GOED, which had agreed to provide up to $15 million in taxpayer-financed incentives, until May.
And when Oracle finally acknowledged to state officials it had halted construction on the 200,000-square-foot data center at 6200 West 10120 South, it didn't explain why or say when work might resume.
"All they said was 'we're postponing.' That is literally all I know," GOED spokesman Michael Sullivan said Wednesday. "They absolutely used the word 'postpone,' and 'we'll let you know.'"
That was enough to reassure GOED that Redwood City, Calif.-based Oracle will eventually follow through on its pledge to build the data-storage center, which was supposed to open in 2010 with 100 employees.
"They are a company that has a long-term strategic plan, and I don't think a company like that makes that kind of commitment and drops it in the middle," Sullivan said. "When they say they are pausing and intend to resume, I tend to take them at face value."
Telephone calls and e-mails to Oracle for comment weren't returned Wednesday.
West Jordan officials, who had put together their own $10 million incentive
"When Oracle assures you they are going to complete the facility, as a city you are patient," West Jordan Community Development Director Tom Burdett said.
"We expect them to complete the project some time and bring the jobs. It's just another circumstance of the recession," Burdett said, adding that Oracle owns the 59-acre site.
Neither West Jordan nor GOED had given Oracle any of the incentive money. Both packages were contingent on Oracle completing the project and creating the promised jobs.
The center was expected to result in $73.6 million in new wages over 10 years and $504 million in new state revenue over 12 years.
Oracle called the data center Project Sequoia when construction began last fall. Sequoia was to have been a pioneering "green" data center that would be a model for future data centers. It would combine energy savings and a modular design that would allow Oracle to expand the building quickly with computing power and efficiency, according to the company.
Burdett said Oracle's plan was to build two phases of a center that would eventually have four phases. He said the land Oracle bought was big enough to contain a much larger building.
The data center was to have supported Oracle's on-demand division, which stores and retrieves data for business customers.
At the time construction began, the company's on-demand business was growing by more than 25 percent a year, Oracle said.
In June, Oracle reported a net profit of $1.9 billion for the quarter ended May 31, down 7 percent from the same time a year earlier. Revenue fell 5.2 percent, to $6.9 billion.
The company said earnings fell mainly because the dollar strengthened against foreign currencies, making Oracle's products more expensive to buy.
Revenue fell because sales of new software licenses fell, the company said.
Headquarters » Redwood City, Calif.
What it does » Develops and sells business software. Also provides data storage services for business customers.
Employees » 84,233
Its software business consists of two units: new software licenses and software license updates and support. In April, Oracle agreed to buy Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion. Wall Street analysts expect the deal to close by summer's end.
