The Reformer asks an intriguing question in a recent article: Big Tech wants to build a data center in your city. Is it worth it? The answer is potentially more intriguing for readers because is seems to depend on several factors, including where it is located. City, suburb, rural area? Are you retrofitting an older building or building new? What deals have been made?…
Community opposition to data centers is rising fast, but big computing facilities still have at least one influential fan.
“If I were the mayor of a town or the governor of a state and I had a chance to get a big … AI plant or data center, I would absolutely want it because the jobs are enormous and the money paid, the taxes paid, are just enormous,” President Donald Trump told reporters last month.
He returned to the subject recently, in harsher form.
“The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor,” Trump said in a lengthy Truth Social post. “If we kill the Golden Goose, you will only have yourselves to blame.”
Recent public polling shows Trump’s stance on data centers is unpopular, even within his own party. A recent Economist/YouGov poll finds the general concept of data center construction underwater by more than 30 percentage points, and Americans opposed to data centers in their communities by a margin of more than 3 to 1.
Fifty-two percent of Republicans would say no to a new data center nearby, while just 28% would support one, the poll found. Respondents expressed particular concern about data centers’ impacts on electric bills and home values.
Those worries and others — about excessive water usage, air and noise pollution, strain on the power grid and secret deals between developers and local officials — are bubbling up across Minnesota as Meta brings the state’s first hyperscale data center online in Rosemount, and Google seeks permission to build two more near Rochester and Duluth. There’s unease about what happens inside these facilities, too.
The use several local examples, such as downtown Minneapolis…
Downtown Minneapolis has several smallish data centers in operation and at least one more under construction. A few dozen more dot the Twin Cities’ suburbs. Some of these have operated uneventfully for decades. But Minnesota does not yet have any computing clusters to rival Quincy’s or Loudoun County’s.
Rosemount…
Meta’s Rosemount facility will be the state’s first experience with the newer generation of industrial-scale facilities that has soured public opinion on data centers generally. Rosemount says Meta could pay the city up to $20 million in property taxes over 20 years and support 148 permanent jobs once operational, likely later this year or in early 2027. The city reported total revenues of $68.8 million in 2024.
The Dakota County assessor expects the project to have a total tax bill of $2.6 million in 2028, Rosemount community development director Adam Kienberger told the Reformer.
The article continues to compare and contrast the experience or potential in each area.