Business leaders and elected officials from throughout the East Mississippi region gathered Tuesday at the MSU Riley Center to celebrate Compass Datacenters as the East Mississippi Business Development Corporation held its annual meeting.

 

Compass, which is based in Dallas, Texas, announced plans to build a data campus in Meridian’s Key Brothers Industrial Park, which will consist of eight high-tech data centers built over the next eight years. In total, the campus represents an investment of more than $10 billion, making it one of the largest investments in state history.

 

“What a way to start the new year,” Gov. Tate Reeves said. “I don’t know what we’re going to do in February.”

 

Gov. Tate Reeves said Tuesday that the data campus project came to fruition because of the hard work of many people, including representatives of Lauderdale County, City of Meridian, the EMBDC, Mississippi Power, Mississippi Development Authority and more. Investments in the industrial park to create shovel ready locations played a large role, he said, as did Mississippi Power’s commitment to provide electricity to the 500 megawatt facility.

 

“It would not have happened without all of y’all,” he said.

 

Anthony Wilson, president and CEO of Mississippi Power, said the Compass deal comes as the utility company celebrates its 100th year of providing power to Mississippi residents and helping with economic development. The utility is constantly working to not only maintain reliable service to its current customers, he said, but also create additional capacity for future industries.

 

In the case of Compass, Mississippi Power built a substation in the industrial park to ensure whatever industry located there would have reliable electricity for its equipment and needs, Wilson said. Data centers use a significant amount of power, and the 500 megawatts needed to run the future data campus is comparable to the power needs of 500 Super Walmarts, he said.

 

“When completed, the Compass data center will be our largest customer in the state of Mississippi,” he said. “For six decades, the Pascagoula Chevron refinery was the largest load. This data center is two times the electric load of the Chevron refinery.”

Mississippi State University President Mark Keenum said Tuesday’s celebration was well deserved, and the data center project is a win for both Meridian and Lauderdale County and the University. The data center announcement, he said, is the fruit of efforts first started more than 25 years ago by the Riley Foundation in renovating the old opera house, a project often credited with sparking Meridian’s downtown revitalization.

 

“We wouldn’t even be here on the Riley campus of Mississippi State University in this beautiful Grand Opera House if it were not for a group of visionary community leaders who had a vision for their community of Meridian and Lauderdale County,” he said.

 

Data centers and the digital economy are the jobs of the future, both in Mississippi and in other states, Keenum said, and Mississippi needs to make sure it has the programs and classes in place to train the next generation to be successful at those jobs. MSU currently offers the only Artificial Intelligence program in the state, he said, and also offers programs in computer science and data security. Moving forward, he said, more opportunities will be needed to make sure the state’s workforce is ready to meet the needs of future industries.

 

Mississippi, and Meridian in particular, is well suited for data center locations, said Compass President and CEO AJ Byers. The Queen City is strategically located along one of the largest fiber optic networks in the southeast, has reliable power and shovel ready sites.

 

“Clearly, Mississippi is embracing the digital economy and ready to take advantage of the many benefits it can bring,” he said. “A bright future is ahead for Mississippi, an attractive location for data centers.”

The data centers alone, however, are not the only change that will come to Meridian. Byers said Compass’ model encourages its customers to locate service centers near data centers, which can result in even more businesses coming to town, more jobs and more economic growth for the surrounding region. The centers themselves are built to last for decades, he said, and the company plans to not only come to Meridian but be an integral part of the community for years to come.

 

“In closing, I want everyone to understand that this is a very, very, very important project for Compass, and we are super excited to be working with such great people in such a great community with such a great state,” he said.

 

Reeves said investments such as the Compass data campus and similar projects in North Mississippi and from Amazon Web Services in the Jackson area, show that Mississippi has a future in the technical computing industry, and is gaining a reputation as a good place for similar companies to locate. With each new announcement, he said Mississippi is showing it is open for business.

 

“In our state, we have the power, we have the people and we have the passion to be a leader in American technological innovation,” he said. “And that’s exactly what we’re proving every single day.”