The New Albany City Council approved an agreement Tuesday with Amazon Web Services that calls for the tech company to spend $3.5 billion to expand its data center operations in the city.

Under the agreement, Amazon will build five data centers and related buildings totaling 1.25 million square feet on 85 of 439 acres the company bought along Beech and Miller roads early this year. Construction would begin in 2025 and be completed by Dec. 31, 2030, according to the Community Reinvestment Area Agreement unanimously approved by the council.

According to the agreement, Amazon will spend $1.8 billion on buildings and $1.7 billion on equipment.

The data centers would create approximately 105 full-time jobs with an annual payroll of $9 million, or an average of $85,000 per position.

Amazon will receive a 30-year tax break on its investments: 100% for the first 15 years and 75% for the next 15 years. In lieu of taxes, Amazon would pay New Albany a minimum $352,750 a year, with that figure rising over time. The city estimates it will receive $1.1 million a year in revenue from the project by 2031.

The project is in the Johnstown-Monroe Local School District, which "has a collaborative and long-standing compensation agreement with the City of New Albany" over new developments, said school district spokesman Craig McDonald. McDonald did not say how much compensation the school district expects to receive from the Amazon project.

“It is still very early in the process and financial models are not currently available, however, the compensation agreement provides revenue to the district through an income tax sharing model not determined strictly by property tax structures," said Johnstown-Monroe Superintendent Philip H. Wagner.

The five new data centers and related buildings are described as the "Phase 1 Project" of Amazon's development. Citing "security reasons," an Amazon spokesperson did not say how many data centers Amazon expects to ultimately build on its land, but plans filed with the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency by the New Albany Co. show up to 30 data centers on the site, which straddles Beech Road near Miller Road.

"This is step one," Merle Madrid, manager of public policy for Amazon Web Services, told New Albany Council members.

Amazon's deal with New Albany provides the first detail on how the company plans to spend $7.8 billion on central Ohio data centers that it announced in June. The amount is the second largest private investment in Ohio following Intel's $20 billion New Albany investment.

“We are proud to reinforce our long-term commitment to the state of Ohio with plans to invest an additional $3.5 billion in New Albany by 2030,” Roger Wehner, Amazon Web Service's director of economic development said in a news release about the investment. “Since 2015, AWS has invested more than $6.3 billion in Ohio while supporting thousands of local jobs. Our newest investment in New Albany builds on our rich partnership with the community and the state.”

Under the terms of the agreement with New Albany, Amazon must join the New Albany Chamber of Commerce and each year submit a "community participation statement" outlining its civic and educational involvement in New Albany.

“AWS has been a strong corporate citizen in central Ohio since arriving here almost a decade ago and has been a major catalyst in the growth of the Silicon Heartland,” said New Albany Mayor Sloan Spalding in the news release. "Our community stands poised to support AWS in addressing the global surge in cloud computing needs."

Amazon now operates seven data centers in central Ohio, three each in New Albany and Hilliard and one in Dublin, according to Baxtel.com, a website that tracks data center development. AWS, which built its first Ohio data center in 2015, employs nearly 1,000 Ohio workers.

Amazon's expansion is part of a growth in data centers overall in the Columbus area, which has become one of the 10 largest for data centers in the nation. In addition to Amazon Web Services, central Ohio has attracted data center investment from tech giants including Facebook, Google and Microsoft.

jweiker@dispatch.com

@JimWeiker

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: New Albany strikes deal with Amazon on data center complex