For county planners, Apple's plan opened a crate of challenges

The 2,200-acre site east of Sparks planned as a major data center for Apple is beyond the reach of municipal services such as fire and police protection.

And that presented one of the biggest challenges to staffers in the Washoe County government as they worked feverishly for 15 months to help bring the project to reality.

For close to a year, county employees didn't know the identity of the company behind the proposal but they knew the developer wanted to move as quickly as possible.

"The challenge was the time frame and getting everyone on board," says Trevor Lloyd, a senior planner with the county government. "We put them on a very aggressive schedule."

On the other hand, the county didn't want to put single-minded focus on the big data center project at the expense of other development proposals.

"We didn't have to stretch too much for Apple," Lloyd says. "We try to treat all of our clients in the same way."

The county's work on the proposal began in February 2011.

Among the first challenges the staff faced: The county's zoning rules didn't make specific provision for data centers as an allowable use in a specific zone. The rules were rewritten.

Another early challenge: The land along Interstate 80 had been designated for services from the City of Sparks, but its location at the eastern end of Truckee Canyon clearly put it outside of the area that could be served by the city in a cost-effective way. The regional plan was amended.

But weeks of hard negotiating followed as the county and the developer began hammering out the specific details of a development agreement.

The sheer size of the Apple project brought issues that the county staff hadn't ever encountered.

At some point, for instance, the company expects to build a 365-megawatt power plant at the site to meet the heavy electric demand of huge server farms.

"That's enough to power a fairly good-sized city," says Lloyd.

(A conservative rule of thumb estimates that a megawatt of power generation capacity is enough to serve 600 homes. At that, the Apple facility would serve 219,000 households.)

The planned generating plant, which would be fired by natural gas, takes advantage of the data center's location near the intersection of major natural gas lines, electrical transmission lines and a big fiber optic line to transport data.

The facility also is expected to meet a portion of its power needs from a farm of solar photovoltaic cells, says Lloyd.

Along with power, developers of the Apple data center will need to deliver a full array of urban services.

Among the agreements reached by the company and the county are those covering water service two tanks of 1 million gallons each are foreseen as well as on-site security services, road systems and fire protection.

Ultimately, Lloyd says, the agreement calls for Apple to build and staff a fire station at the data center.

When it's completely developed, the data center is projected to include more than 2 million of square feet in numerous buildings.

For the county's building inspectors, who spend most of their time checking residential projects, the wide range of work planned at the Apple site brings a professional challenge, says Don Jeppson, director of the county's Department of Building and Safety.

"It's fun," says Jeppson. "It boosts morale."