September 21, 2018
T he C olumbia P ress
5
Data center: Will be start of ‘something big’
Miss Clatsop gears up for new season
Continued from Page 1
The Miss Clatsop County
Scholarship Program seeks
young people interested
in becoming the next Miss
Clatsop County, Miss North
Coast, Miss Clatsop County’s
Outstanding Teen or Miss
North Coast’s Outstanding
Teen.
Females age 13 to 24 are
asked to visit the organiza-
tion’s Facebook page or web-
site to download application.
Contestants must reside, at-
tend school or work in Clat-
sop, Tillamook or Columbia
counties.
Miss Clatsop County Schol-
arship Program is a nonprof-
it corporation established
to provide contestants with
the opportunity to enhance
professional and education
goals, and achieve those
pursuits with the assistance
of monetary grants and
awards.
The program is an official
preliminary competition for
the Miss Oregon pageant,
which is part of the Miss
“One of my first investors,
a retired mutual fund man-
ager, … said she was doing it
for the love of Oregon and the
Oregon Coast, but also for the
social impact we’ll have on
education and the chance to
bring young minds into tech-
nology (careers).”
Already Cox has formed
partnerships with the Port of
Astoria, Clatsop Community
College, Clatsop County and
the city of Warrenton.
The estimated $200 million
project would be developed
in three phases and will break
ground later this year.
For local officials, it’s the
start of something big.
“The creation of a data cen-
ter would present the op-
portunity for the college to
develop curriculum and pro-
gramming that would give
our students another path-
way to success,” said Chris
Breitmeyer, Clatsop College
president.
“A successful data center
technician’s certificate could
be a one-year program that
would allow students to
make a family-wage salary. I
believe the national average
salary for these folks is above
$60,000.”
Jim Knight, executive di-
rector of the Port of Astoria,
called it one of the biggest
things to happen in the coun-
ty in a long time.
“It’s an incredible oppor-
tunity in that it will radically
give us the capacity to have a
significant increase in inter-
net speed … and it increas-
es redundancy,” he said, the
lack of which caused prob-
lems in the 2007 storm.
“The average wage for those
working there is about dou-
ble the average wage for Clat-
sop County,” Knight added.
“It will increase jobs, the tax
base, the wage base. I haven’t
found a downside yet.”
An artist’s rendering of how the North Coast Data and Tech-
nology Center might look.
Cox grew up in Westport
and Astoria and attended
Clatskanie High School.
He studied computer tech-
nology at Clatsop Commu-
nity College, a program no
longer offered there, and
graduated from the Universi-
ty of Oregon with bachelor’s
degrees in both marketing
and finance.
He co-founded one of the
country’s first 200 nation-
wide internet service provid-
ers in 1997, Global Frontiers
Inc. In 2004, he founded
Web Hosting Pros, which he
still runs.
“I’m real excited about the
opportunity to bring com-
puter technology back to the
area,” Cox said. “There’s so
much to offer people and
young families here. … One
thing I’ve really come to ap-
preciate is how beautiful it is.”
There are many tech com-
panies in greater Los Ange-
les, but the region doesn’t
offer the amenities of Clatsop
County, with its rivers, for-
ests, lakes, oceans, affordable
housing and 17.2-minute av-
erage commute time.
Also, Oregon is the nation’s
leader in linking undersea
Internet cables with the rest
of the country. There are 17
such cables off Oregon.
“They’re projecting over
22 billion devices will be on-
line by the end of 2022,” Cox
said. “That’s a tremendous
opportunity not just for my
company, but all companies
involved in this industry. And
it’s important for this coun-
ty.”
An estimated 600 zetta-
bytes will be generated by all
people, machines and things
by 2020, he pointed out. One
zettabyte is equal to 1 tril-
lion gigabytes and 1 gigabyte
equals 1,024 megabytes.
“To wrap people’s heads
around that, if all cell phones
had 64 gigabytes of storage,
600 zettabytes would allow
for every human on the plan-
et to have nearly 1,400 cell
phones each.”
Having the support of local
leaders is important, too. On
Aug. 6, the county commis-
sion was unanimous in its
decision to sell the 67-acre
industrial-zoned parcel to
Cox’s company, Agile Design
LLC, for $1.2 million.
There will be challenges:
funding, weather, education,
housing.
“I’m fearless,” Cox said. “I
am mindful of the challeng-
es, but I’m the kind of person
that likes to rise up and meet
challenges.”
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America Organization.
In 2018, Miss Clatsop
County made $7,000 in
scholarships available to lo-
cal women.
The Miss Clatsop County
pageant is Jan. 26, 2019, at
Seaside Convention Center.
Contestants are judged in
interview, talent, physical
fitness, evening wear and an
on-stage question. Deadline
to enter is Dec. 1. Winners
move on to represent our
area at the Miss Oregon pag-
eant in June 2019.
In addition to the Miss
and Teen divisions, the Miss
Clatsop supports a princess
program to mentor girls
ages 6 to 12.
For younger participants,
the emphasis is on citizen-
ship, leadership and volun-
teerism. A $75 participation
fee is requested for those
participating in the princess
program.
Miss
Clatsop
County
Scholarship Program is run
by volunteers.