Company confirms it has won Homeland Security
contract for data center;
deal estimated at $800
million, 200 jobs created


By TOM McLAUGHLIN
News & Record Staff
It’s now official in an unofficial sort of way.
Electronic Data Services is coming to Clarksville.
“I can confirm that we won the contract,” said a high-placed EDS
company official this week who asked not be named. “We are coming.
“There will be an EDS data center there. It’s a scalable data center to
provide IT [information technology] data services to a client. The
facility meets all EDS requirements for power resiliency and
redundancy. It’s a very secure facility. There are redundant network
roots, and we see a very low possibility of having a natural disaster.”
Officially, company officials do not want to publicize the exact
location of the Clarksville site, nor publicly reveal the name of EDS’s
client. Unofficially, all the relevent details were let out of the bag
back in March, when EDS officials traveled to Clarksville to outline
their plans to transform the vacant Russell Stover Candy plant into a
high-tech data processing center for the Department of Homeland
Security.
The company has since become more coy, in response to pressure from
Department of Homeland Security to keep quiet about the project. But
EDS signed the long-awaited contract for the data center with the
agency sometime in the past 10 days, the company official said.
Other big news: The data center will employ nearly 200 people, with
many of those jobs going to local applicants, said the official.
“What I’ve been told is that the project team will include about 200
jobs and all those positions are new,” the official said. A small
portion of the work may be done off-site at other locations in the
region, but the vast majority of jobs will be centered in Clarksville.
“I know there will be people moving into the area and I know there have
been job fairs in the area to hire people who are already there, so I
would think there would be a mix” of outsiders coming in and current
residents holding jobs at the site, said the official.
Earlier estimated at a whopping $560 million, the actual contract with
Department of Homeland Security clocks in at a stratospheric $800
million.
“We’re looking at up to about $800 million now,” said the official.
“Before it was more an estimate. This is a real number.”
One thing EDS apparently won’t be doing is making a formal announcement
of its Homeland Security coup.  “We are not making an announcement,”
the official said, adding that other entities not connected with the
company may have their own plans in this regard.
The data center is a sensitive topic in the halls of government, but
the official said local residents shouldn’t worry about the center
affecting daily life in Clarksville. “We’re not just going to let
anybody on the site,” the official said, but people who aren’t doing
business at the facility shouldn’t notice much difference from it.
EDS posted its first security guard at the Russell Stover plant this
week, and the site has been visited by helicopters descending in the
night, according to Clarksville residents. EDS’s eventual arrival may
have been the worst-kept secret in town, but now it’s official.
More or less.
As of Monday, Linwood Duncan, press secretary for Rep. Virgil Goode,
said the congressman’s office hadn’t heard any further news about the
Clarksville project.
“We have heard nothing official [on the awarding of a DHS contract to
EDS] and nothing has been posted on the DHS website,” said Duncan.
But preparations have been proceeding apace on the facility. Six
Mecklenburg Electric Cooperative vehicles were on the scene late last
week, and Ligon Excavating dug the drainage for the building's cooling
system. A local landowner with property across the lake from
Clarksville said she was contacted this week by a local Realtor,
seeking rental property for an EDS manager moving into the area.
The official with EDS was unable to provide an estimate for when the
data center may become operational, but said the company was raring to
go. “There may be some touches that need to be done. But the facility
is up and is running.”