Business spotlight: Terremark Worldwide

Terremark Worldwide Inc., is coming to Culpeper County and investing $270 million to open a data center campus, bringing with it 250 high-tech and high-paying jobs.

Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine announced the Miami-based company's expansion in January at Germanna Community College Center for Advanced Technology.

Terremark is a leading operator of integrated Internet exchanges and a global provider of managed Information Technology (IT) infrastructure solutions for government and private sectors.

Its CEO, Manuel Medina, says his business is founded on connectivity coupled with services. He likens it to an airport that connects passengers to where they need to go. Only, in this case, the company virtually connects the marketplace: business, government and education.

"I will give you a promise," Medina said to a crowd of hundreds of people, "In five years or six or seven when all of this is complete, what you will see is the area around us, companies will come. Because what we are bringing today will bring hundreds of benefits into Culpeper."

Terremark plans to build its campus on a 30-acre site adjacent to the college on the Old Dominion Winery property, which closed several years ago. Terremark has designed a master plan for the site that calls for five data center buildings, each about 50,000 square feet, to include an office, commercial data center and government data center.

Medina said the presence of Terremark in Culpeper would also bring other networks, such as Telecom New Zealand, Telecom Australia and China Netcom.

Terremark got its toehold in Virginia about one year ago when it opened a branch in Herndon. After establishing there, Medina said the company began looking for a place to build its own facility.

Terremark will bring high-paying IT jobs, with a median salary of $90,000, and include network operators, network managers, network architects, telecommunications specialists and project managers.