Google Council Bluffs campus, 2022 expansion (state contract 23-HQJPTC-005) with earlier 2007, 2012, and 2015 awards
tax abatement, signed, approved 2022-10-21
Operator: Google
Developer: Google LLC
Scale: 3,000,000 sq ft · 600,000,000 USD
No reliable total acreage was confirmed. The Southlands property about four miles south of the original site is reported at 1,000 acres, bought in 2007 for expansion room; no sourced figure for the original site was found, so the 2,200-acre total previously recorded here is dropped. Square footage is Data Center Frontier's description of the existing facilities, roughly 3 million square feet across three buildings, not a figure in any agreement. Cost is the 2022 state contract amount ($600,000,000 total project cost and capital investment). Cumulative investment was reported at more than $5 billion as of 2024, plus a further $1 billion announced July 2, 2024 that appears in no state contract record. No MW figure has been published; power use has been confidential since 2007.
Verification: from news reports
A strong version: A fund that scales with the project, with a community seat on the body that spends it
Not addressed in the agreement.
No community betterment payment, unlike Google's Cedar Rapids deal. Voluntary giving: more than $3 million to local schools and nonprofits since 2009, the BLink free Wi-Fi partnership with the city, $250,000 to Advance Southwest Iowa in 2023, and a $1.3 million grant to the Great Outdoors Foundation in 2024 for Missouri River basin grade stabilization at 47 locations.
Softening languageAll community giving is voluntary, with no agreement obligating any of it.
A strong version: Incentives come back if the facility stops operating, not only if a jobs number is missed
triggers: jobs, investment · proportional: yes
Iowa's High Quality Jobs rules require repayment in the same proportion as the job or capital shortfall, the greater of the two if both, and full repayment if the business fails to meet the benefit requirements or to maintain program eligibility. The 2022 contract carried no state tax benefit, so the state clawback has little to bite on; whether the city's abatement has its own clawback is unknown because the city agreement is not posted.
A strong version: A bond, escrow, or letter of credit that pays for teardown and site restoration if the operator walks
Not addressed in the agreement.
instrument: none
None found. In June 2026 Mayor Jill Shudak named the cost of demolishing a site if data centers leave as an issue the city has not addressed: if they leave and the city has to take on the cost to demolish it, that is an extremely large cost.
A strong version: The operator pays for its own interconnection and carries a minimum bill that survives it leaving
interconnect paid by: unknown
Served by MidAmerican Energy. In 2007 MidAmerican would not say how much electricity the data center would consume, citing a confidentiality agreement with Google. Google contracted 407 megawatts of MidAmerican wind energy for its Council Bluffs operations in 2014. Who pays for interconnection and whether any minimum bill applies is unknown.
A strong version: A stated cap or closed-loop cooling, plus public reporting
cooling: unknown
Google's own 2025 environmental report lists Council Bluffs as the highest-withdrawal and highest-consumption site in its data center table: 1,410.3 million gallons withdrawn, 400.1 discharged and 1,010.2 consumed in 2024. That reporting is voluntary. The city's public works director said data center requests run about a million to two million gallons a day, that water and sewer are operating at very high capacity, and that expanding wastewater infrastructure could cost $200 million to $300 million. No cap or reporting requirement in a city agreement was found.
Softening languageThe only water reporting is Google's own voluntary corporate disclosure; no agreement requires it.
A strong version: A numeric limit measured at the nearest residence or property line
A strong version: Binding job commitments with a consequence, not projections
permanent: 31 · enforceable: yes
The 2022 state contract requires 31 created jobs at a qualifying wage of $28.73 an hour, with a project completion date of 10/31/2029 and a maintenance date of 10/31/2031, enforceable through the proportional clawback. Earlier awards required 60 jobs at $25.02 in 2007 and 35 jobs at $18.81 in 2012. Google has reported more than 900 people employed on site in full-time and supplier roles.
A strong version: Local subcontracting goals and haul-route road repair paid by the operator
A strong version: No NDA, the agreement is public, and an independent audit on a schedule
agreement public: no · dashboard: no · audit: none · independent: no
State awards and contract status are public in the IEDA annual report and the state's open project dataset. The city's own agreements were approved in open session but could not be located online; the April 20, 2015 record shows only that the council authorized the mayor to execute an amendment to Master Contract 12-TC-071. Power use has been confidential since the first agreement.
A strong version: A but-for test before any abatement, with the forgone revenue stated
PILOT: no · forgone: $16,600,000
The city granted a reported $16.6 million property-tax break for the 2022 expansion; its percentage and term are not published. State tax benefits: $1,406,250 awarded in 2007, $16,800,000 in 2012, and a $19.8 million sales and use tax refund approved in April 2015, which Data Center Knowledge described as bringing Google's Iowa state incentives to about $36.6 million (that $36.6 million counts the 2015 and 2012 awards only; adding 2007 brings it to about $38 million). The 2022 award carried no state tax benefit. Iowa also grants a sales and use tax exemption under Iowa Code 423.3(95) to data center businesses investing at least $200 million within their first six years.
Mayor Jill Shudak proposed a one-year moratorium in June 2026 over water and sewer capacity, the chance to look at a community benefits agreement, and unaddressed demolition costs; the council rejected it unanimously (no tally was reported). source
Democratic gubernatorial nominee Rob Sand's 2026 plan would end state data center tax breaks, prohibit NDAs on future deals, require developers to pay 100 percent of utility upgrade costs, and mandate public disclosure of water and energy use, size, acreage, and jobs. source