Data Centers Should Be a Win for Communities. Why Are Companies Losing the Argument?

Data centers should be viewed as one of the biggest economic wins a local community can land.

These projects represent extraordinary levels of private investment and economic activity. They can significantly expand a local tax base, create construction and skilled-trade work, support infrastructure investment and become an important part of a community's long-term economic foundation.

Yet across the country, something remarkable has happened. In many communities, data centers are treated as if someone wants to build a nuclear reactor in the middle of town square.

Residents get caught up in fears about electricity costs, water consumption, noise, transmission lines, tax incentives, land use and enormous corporations arriving from somewhere else.

Opposition organizes. Local officials become nervous. Projects that should begin with enormous advantages can suddenly find themselves on the defensive.

As someone who has spent much of his career communicating in difficult public environments, I find it astounding how far off track the discussion has gotten.

And I don't think the solution begins with better corporate talking points, but rather by truly understanding each aspect of the community.

Get on the ground

When companies ask for help with local siting and land use issues, the first thing I do is go there.

Not simply to meet with the economic-development authority or elected officials.

I want to spend time in the community.

I want to visit the coffee shops and diners. Read the local newspaper. Listen to local radio. Talk with business owners. Drive through the neighborhoods. Study the local politics. Learn which institutions people trust and which they don't.

I want to understand what people are actually saying when the developer isn't in the room.

Before developing the message, you have to understand the community. Because the old maxim that “all politics is local” really matters when it comes to approving an unknown like a new data center.

What do people value? What are they worried about? Which concerns are real? Which concerns are based on incomplete information? Who influences opinion? Who is trusted? Where are the pressure points?

And most importantly: what would make this project genuinely valuable to the people who already live there?

Only after answering those questions should the communications campaign begin.

Nothing New Under the Sun

For decades, I used essentially this approach in candidate and public-advocacy campaigns.

Often, the candidate or cause I represented began in a clear minority position. Frequently, we were being outspent three-to-one or more.

We couldn't afford to communicate badly.

Winning meant understanding the community better than the opposition did.

It meant identifying the persuadable middle, figuring out which issues actually moved people rather than which issues political professionals assumed should move them. And it meant finding language that sounded authentic in that particular community and pairing that message with credible local messengers.

“You cannot persuade a community you do not understand.”

A billion-dollar balance sheet doesn't always win

A data center developer can arrive with billions of dollars in capital, world-class engineers, sophisticated attorneys, experienced lobbyists and an impressive economic-impact analysis.

And still lose the community.

Because none of those resources automatically answers the question a resident is asking:

What's in this for us?

That answer cannot simply be a number in an economic-impact report.

People need to understand the project in the context of their own community.

Will it strengthen the tax base? What does that mean for schools? Will infrastructure improve? Are local workers going to benefit? Will the project increase pressure on electricity or water? What protections are being put in place? What will residents see and hear? Why this location? Why should they trust the company? Will it impact my health?

Those questions deserve real answers.

And if the answers aren't good enough, sometimes the right communications advice is not to develop a better slogan.

Sometimes the project itself — or the community-benefit package surrounding it — needs to improve.

That is part of earning trust.

Don't wait until the hearing

The worst time to begin building community support is when hundreds of angry residents have already organized against the project.

By then, opinions have hardened. Opposition has selected the language of the debate. Local media has identified the controversy. Elected officials have begun calculating the political consequences. The developer is responding rather than leading.

Good community strategy begins much earlier.

Understand the environment. Identify legitimate concerns. Find potential allies. Determine what the project can do for the community. Develop language people actually understand. Communicate through credible local voices. Build relationships before asking for anything.

And then execute with discipline.

The goal isn't PR

The objective isn't a positive newspaper article. It isn't an attractive mailer. It isn't a successful open house.

Those can all be useful tools.

The objective is broader:

Earn enough understanding, trust and genuine community support that public officials can confidently approve a good project — and that the approval remains durable afterward.

That requires public relations. But it also requires political intelligence, stakeholder engagement, coalition building, earned media, issue management, grassroots understanding, persuasive communications and campaign-style execution.

I don't see those as separate disciplines. I see them as parts of the same campaign.

And that campaign should start on the ground.

Listen. Understand. Engage. Persuade. Build support. Earn approval.

For an industry capable of bringing enormous investment and opportunity into a community, the argument should not be impossible to win.

But first, data-center planners have to get much better at making it.

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