Whinstone taking shape

If there was ever a week that needed some good, local, economic news for Rockdale this is it.

So here it is.

Whinstone USA, the entrepreneurial data company which moved from Louisiana to Rockdale, has almost completed one 60,000-squarefoot building at the former Alcoa Rockdale Operations and is well into construction of a second, according to spokesman Chad Harris.

A third is already in the planning stage.

The company’s permanent work force is now hovering around the 100 level, virtually all of them local.

There are well over 100 contractors on the job, by far the biggest construction project in the Rockdale area since the Alcoa-Luminant days.

Again, many of them local.

VIRUS—Before the COVID-19 drama began last weekend, power was estimated to go to the first Whinstone building in as soon as 40 days.

“We’ve stopped all site tours as of today (Monday),” Harris said. “All vendors delivering to the site must provide previous delivery locations.”

Harris said security personnel have been briefed on new procedures.

“Monday we had a meeting and prepared strategy in the event of a governmental closure and talked about our plan to take care of our team members.”

“The events of COVID-19 are at the forefront of our management teams’ thought processes to carefully analyze risks for our team members and our community,” Harris said. “It is times like these we need to act together for the betterment of all.”

PROGRESS—Shelving 700 feet, of 1,000, has been completed by the weekend (above) and the remaining part will follow shortly.

That’s Building A. The superstructure for the adjacent Building B is going up at a rapid pace and the footprint has been cleared for Building C.

When completed, that will give Whinstone 180,000 square feet of space.

JOBS—Harris said Whinstone will hire 44 more permanent workers over the next 60 days, bringing the total number of employees to around 150.

The company will provide contracting cryptocurrency mining services for a number of clients.

After the approximately 150 employees are up and running in the three giant buildings, productivity factors will determine future demand for additional construction and employment, Harris said.

INNOVATION—There’s a story behind the shelving now being installed in the buildings.

“We started a few computers one day in our office building and the heat was just unbearable, probably 115 degrees with the air conditioning running full blast,” Harris said.

“Lyle (Theriot, Whinstone CEO), came back with some two-by-fours and started building some prototypes of shelves to address the problem,” Harris said.

And that’s what is being installed.

“It’s really a simple concept,” Harris said. “Fresh air comes in at the sides, cools the computers in the shelves and the hot air rushed inward and up in the middle. It’s sort of like a chimney.”

CONSTRUCTION—The construction force of well over 100 features a number of local contractors, including Perry & Perry Builders, Bland Construction, Texas Electric, MSI, Knife River and others.

“That’s by design,” Harris said. “We always planned to be a part of the community. It makes us feel so good when we see some of the smaller firms able to hire more employees because of getting this work.”

Whinstone has also been a part of something of an economic turnaround in the Rockdale area, with Milam County sales tax receipts rising dramatically (see page 6B), unemployment at the lowest level in years and several new businesses started in Rockdale in the past several months.

MEGAWATTS—Whinstone came to Alcoa because of the ready availability of a power interface.

Cryptocurrency requires extraordinary amounts of electricity and Oncor is working on the former Sandow Switch Yard across the street to be ready to provide the power for the Whinstone interface.

Whinstone could became, at some point, the world’s largest data center of its kind.

“Data center” implies at one point doing more than cryptocurrency mining and that’s in Whinstone’s longrange goals.

Whinstone will include blockchain, video rendering and artificial intelligence.

Blockchain, a component of Bitcoin mining, is described as a “digital ledger.” Video rendering is using information from a coded data source to produce and display an image.

Artificial intelligence is the kind of high tech which drives “Siri” and facilitates sophisticated chat options.