“Apple’s new $1 billion data center — one of the highest-profile new data centers in the world — has put the town of Maiden, North Carolina (population: just over 3,000) on the tech map,” Katie Fehrenbacher reports for GigaOM. “But it almost didn’t get built.”

“‘We almost lost it,’ says the President of the Catawba County Economic Development group, Scott Millar, who has a background in advertising and a penchant for crossword puzzles,” Fehrenbacher reports. “That would have been a major missed opportunity — at the peak of construction of Apple’s data center there were 1,400 construction workers on-site on a single day, says Millar. But beyond just the construction jobs, Apple’s influence — as one of the world’s largest and most-watched tech companies — is enormous. ‘It gave us the ability to be able to convince others to locate here, too,’ says Millar, adding, ‘They are a powerful company.’”

Read more in the full article here.