Apple ties.

• Author: Mildenberg, David
• Position: NC TREND: Charlotte Resion

Scott Millar knew Apple's impact on Catawba County could be huge when the economic developer first met with the company's representatives at a now-defunct Tripp's restaurant in Hickory in 2007. But he never expected the world's most valuable company to invest $5 billion for its data center and solar farms on former farmland near Maiden. "Mind-boggling," he calls it.

The Cupertino, Calif.-based behemoth started building a $1 billion data center in 2009 on a 182-acre plot formerly held by Don Beaver, owner of the Charlotte Knights baseball team. It has added buildings, acquired 300 acres for solar panels and fuel-cell technology to power its servers, and is now planning to buy another 237 acres. Apple has confirmed that it has put almost $3 billion into the site. With more construction under way, the tab is rising and may represent the biggest private-sector, non-utility investment in a single project in state history, says Ernie Pearson, a veteran economic-development lawyer in Raleigh.

Apple won't say much about what it does in Maiden, but "it's the home of all of their knowledge," says Millar, CEO of Catawba County Economic Development. (Siri may rent a studio apartment in Maiden, some highly placed sources say.) The facility complements similar U.S. centers in Reno, Nev., and Princeville, Ore., for Apple, which had a stock-market value of nearly $700 billion in mid-February. (That is more than the total economies of all...