Data centers, already proliferating across central and eastern Oregon, have suddenly charged across the Cascades and into the Portland metro area.

Three separate companies announced projects in Hillsboro this past week.

They're coming for "enterprise zone" tax exemptions on their pricey equipment, for relatively cheap electricity, for Oregon's mild climate and for a reliable local power and communications grid that's a legacy of the Washington County chip industry.

The new facilities' backers will spend hundreds of millions of dollars in the coming months to build and outfit the centers.

They won't hire a lot of workers, though. Computers do the heavy lifting inside data centers, which generally require no more than a few dozen people to monitor the systems.

Hillsboro's new data centers

Adobe Systems

Project size

: 75,000 square feet on 11 acres

Energy use

: Undisclosed

Jobs

: "We don't expect there will be a high number of Adobe jobs created locally."

Timeline

: Construction starts next year.

Digital Realty Trust

(NetApp)

Project size

: 55,000 square feet on 5.1 acres

Energy use

: 4.5 megawatts

Jobs

: Undisclosed

Timeline

: First phase scheduled for completion in August 2012

Fortune Data Centers

Project size

: 240,000 square feet on 15 acres

Energy use

: 7.8 megawatts

Jobs

: 20-40

Timeline

: First phase will open by summer 2012

State and city economic development officials say they haven't actively courted data centers for Hillsboro.

And city leaders acknowledge data centers weren't what they had in mind when they broadened enterprise zones in the city last year to offer property tax exemptions on more idle property. (All three of the projects are in enterprise zones; two are in areas included in last year's expansion.)

Yet they're encouraged by any development on properties that have sat idle despite years, at a time when very few other industries are growing.

"We're certainly not going to turn them down," said Hillsboro economic development director John Southgate. "It's great to have their investment."

Data centers are the brains behind the Internet, storing huge volumes of corporate and personal information and increasingly doing sophisticated data processing, too.

It's a rapidly growing industry, driven by easy network access and by mobile computing. Smartphones are in constant communication with data centers for access to information and to tap computing power that pocket-sized devices can't handle.

On Tuesday, Intel said its sales to data centers have climbed 15 percent in the past year, contributing to the chipmaker's unexpectedly strong quarterly results.

Oregon's relatively low power costs, its cool air (data center computers run hot, and the facilities must be chilled to keep from overheating) and Oregon's tax breaks make the state an attractive home for data centers.

Google led the march into Oregon when it built its first big corporate center at The Port of The Dalles five years ago.

, and is already expanding.

.

Other big companies are contemplating data centers in the eastern half of the state, too, but strained power networks into rural communities may limit future growth.

Hillsboro has no such problems, with a robust grid built for energy-intensive technology manufacturing.

Last Monday, a company called

in Hillsboro for data management company NetApp.

The Portland Business Journal reported Friday that Adobe Systems -- which provides much of its software to clients over the Internet --

. Construction starts next year on a 75,000-square-foot facility on 11 acres.

Also Friday, Fortune Data Centers, a Silicon Valley company that operates wholesale data centers, said

. Hillsboro valued the project at $80 million initially.

When it opens next year, Fortune will employ 20 to 40 people at its new data center in an old chip factory built to hold 250 workers.

Fortune's clients will add additional jobs to monitor equipment within the building, and it has the potential to add a second building on the site. But it still won't approach the number that might have worked there had a chip manufacturer reopened it.

The trouble is, chip manufacturers weren't lining up. Much of that industry has moved abroad; Oregon electronics manufacturing employment shed more than 14,000 jobs -- a quarter of its total -- in the past decade.

Fortune was ready to go, by comparison, and has 100 construction workers already on site working to adapt the old factory.

"What's the alternative? Right now, there isn't one," said Matt Mochary, head of Fortune Development Group, Fortune's data center development arm, which spent a year scouting properties for its second big data center (its first is in San Jose.

"We looked throughout the Northwest because the power is cheap and the air is cool and dry," Mochary said.

The company settled on Oregon because its tax exemptions were clearly defined and readily available, he said. Washington, by comparison, allowed a sales tax exemption on data center projects to expire earlier this year.

Big corporations such as Google and Facebook choose rural areas to maximize their cost savings by selecting areas with cheap land and cheap power. But Mochary said that wholesale data centers prefer to be closer to cities, so their clients have easier access to the facility.

And, he said, the cost difference between rural and suburban areas isn't that great.

Data centers aren't brand new in the metro area. Intel opened a 70,000 square foot facility in Hillsboro five years ago, and many large organizations and small Internet companies such as EasyStreet Online have their own facilities.

Still, the announcement of three data centers from out-of-state companies in one month illustrates how fast the industry is growing. Tom Hughes, Metro Council president and former mayor of Hillsboro, notes that even with property tax exemptions, energy-intensive data centers generate high franchise fees from their electricity consumption.

"All of the sudden they do become something of a revenue source," he said.

The new data centers are all in industrial zones pre-approved for tax breaks. Hillsboro couldn't block the projects even if it wanted to, according to Southgate, the economic development manager.

Still, he said, Hillsboro will monitor the situation to ensure they don't consumer too much industrial land and leave the city without enough land for job growth. Potentially, he said, the city could raise the jobs threshold for future projects to qualify for enterprise zone exemptions.

"If we find we're getting a lot more serious interest and a lot of it's likely to be committed to this kind of use, I think it'd be a fair policy conversation we would have," Southgate said.

"Three does not a crisis make."

-- Mike Rogoway; twitter: @rogoway; phone: 503-294-7699