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QUINCY — Curt Morris said with a small grin that the feeling of seeing a business like Yahoo! locate within his town is becoming familiar.

But, the Port of Quincy commissioner added, Yahoo! is only now realizing what many Quincy residents have known all along.

"People of the world are finally discovering why we like to live here in Quincy," he said. "While they can pick anywhere in the world to locate, and it takes a tremendous number of criteria, the physical assets are one thing."

The question then becomes the permitting process and whether a community can support a company such as Yahoo!, Morris added.

"Obviously, Quincy has passed that test again," he said. "Probably finally, it's, will they be able to attract their employees to live in Quincy? Well, with all of the things we have to offer, as far as weather, water, mountains to ski in, close proximity to Seattle and Spokane, they all know why we like to live in Quincy, and we look forward to having them here."

That was a sentiment common amongst the community representatives in attendance at the ground breaking ceremony to welcome Yahoo! Wednesday morning, at the site of what will become 1115 Industrial Parkway.

The view from the future site of the Yahoo! data center was the in-progress Columbia Colstor warehouse, estimated to open this fall.

A little farther beyond that lies the Port of Quincy's intermodal facility.

More than one speaker pointed out the three in-progress developments in such close proximity to one another, at the Wednesday morning ceremony where Yahoo! broke ground on the new building, its first to be built from the ground up.

"Yahoo! is a worldwide company known throughout the world," Morris said. "To have them locate here in Quincy is extremely exciting. They've already proven to be great neighbors. We're as enthusiastic as you can be to welcome a company and their employees."

Those who addressed the gathered audience of community representatives and members included Yahoo! senior vice president Lars Rabbe, vice president of operations Kevin Timmons, Grant County Commissioner Richard Stevens, Morris, Grant County Public Utility District commissioner Randy Allred, Grant County Economic Development Council executive director Terry Brewer, Quincy Valley Chamber of Commerce manager Lisa Karstetter and Quincy mayor Dick Zimbelman.

"We're going to be building a data center here that's going to be state-of-the-art, going to support our services worldwide," Rabbe said. "We're here because of the economic climate, and the availability of real, reliable power … This is going to become a cornerstone in our business going forward."

Timmons outlined the history of the company's arrival in Grant County as he spoke to the audience, and told them the first building will be almost 170,000 square feet. Construction begins immediately, with completion anticipated for early fall in 2007.

"It's going to be one of the largest servers in storage of facilities in the world when it's done," he said. "There's stuff that we don't typically talk about, which is all the innovations and all that kind of secret sauce that's going to go inside the building … It's all going to result in world-class service, a world-class facility, world-class efficiency and we're quite excited about it."

Timmons said later that the data center will employ a spectrum of positions required by Yahoo!, including computer technicians, network engineers, systems administrators and facility engineers. The company is not working with any local groups at the moment, but will employ a mix of area residents and people relocating from other Yahoo! locations. The company is in the process of interviewing management for the site, he added.

Timmons said Yahoo! is not doing anything additional after the death last week of a worker at the Microsoft data center construction site, also in Quincy, because one of Yahoo! criteria for selecting any contractor or partner is their safety record, although he said the company looked over the processes and procedures as far as safety is concerned.

"We're very cognizant of it; it's just a tragedy," Timmons said.

"This is the first one we've built from the ground up, so we're very much learning as we go," Yahoo! spokesperson Kiersten Hollars said of the facility. "We've got more than 25 data centers globally, and this is the first one we're building from the ground up, so it's a huge, extremely important project and investment for us."

That's because building up its own facility affords Yahoo! the opportunity to do the work themselves and more quickly and efficiently, she added, with more control over the facility's use and what it houses.

There's no estimated date for the facility to be operated, Hollars added, as that's still a ways down the line.

"We've not run into any roadblocks whatsoever," Timmons marveled. "I think a project of this magnitude would not get spun up in this short amount of time without the kind of cooperation we've had from the commissioners, the city, the mayor, Tim Snead (Quincy city administrator) … That bodes very well for the rest of the project."