A proposed data center can produce remarkably different reactions within the same community.
Supporters see substantial private investment, additional tax revenue, infrastructure improvements, construction activity, and the possibility of attracting new industries.
Opponents see enormous electricity demand, environmental impacts, limited permanent employment, potential costs to existing utility customers, and concerns about where these facilities belong.
Both perspectives raise legitimate questions.
But too often, the public discussion begins with whether people support or oppose the project, before anyone has developed a credible method for measuring its actual economic contribution.
That sequence is backward.
As a founder-operator and finance executive, I've spent much of my career evaluating investments, infrastructure, capital requirements, operating risks, and opportunities for business growth.
I've also seen how consequential infrastructure decisions can be. The right infrastructure can make entire categories of future business possible. The wrong investment, or even the right investment in the wrong location, can create obligations and consequences that last for decades.
That's what prompted me to examine a proposed data center in Cle Elum, Washington, where my family and I live in the surrounding Upper Kittitas County community.
Our independent research includes a 25-page public discussion brief and a 31-page preliminary economic and fiscal assessment. Both examine potential benefits, infrastructure requirements, financial implications, and alternative sites.
The work has reinforced an important distinction:
A large private investment is not necessarily a large public benefit. But a relatively small number of direct jobs does not necessarily mean the investment has limited economic value.
Neither conclusion tells the whole story.
Investment is an input. Economic development is an outcome.
Consider a hypothetical $200 million data center.
The developer announces the investment, construction activity, electrical requirements, and expected permanent employment.
Those are important facts to establish. But they don't tell us what the community will actually receive.
A $200 million construction budget is not the same as $200 million in taxable assessed value. Property-tax revenue is distributed among multiple taxing districts, not simply deposited into the host city's General Fund.
Similarly, a substantial electrical load does not automatically translate into unrestricted municipal utility-tax revenue. The tax structure, utility provider, actual consumption, applicable exemptions, and legal allocation of receipts all matter.
Construction employment is temporary. Permanent employment may be relatively modest compared with the capital invested.
Meanwhile, utilities, roads, emergency services, environmental mitigation, and other public obligations can create costs that must be measured against revenues.
The first test, therefore, is not the developer's projected investment.
It is the incremental, recurring net value to the community, including who receives the money and who bears the costs.
Infrastructure can matter more than the building itself.
This is where the discussion becomes more interesting.
Railroads, highways, electric power, and telecommunications networks helped determine where businesses could operate and what industries could emerge.
A modern data center sits at the intersection of several of these systems.
It requires substantial electrical capacity, reliable telecommunications, cooling, physical security, and specialized construction and maintenance capabilities.
Under the right circumstances, meeting those requirements could help justify investments that strengthen the surrounding economic environment.
But there is a critical qualification.
Infrastructure serving a data center is not automatically infrastructure serving the community.
A dedicated electrical connection may benefit only the facility. A private fiber route may never provide meaningful broadband access to nearby businesses or residents. A utility upgrade could strengthen system capacity, or it could impose new costs on existing customers.
These distinctions have to be documented, not assumed.
The important questions are whether infrastructure capacity is genuinely shared or expandable, whether other businesses can access it, whether the developer is paying its appropriate costs, and whether there is a credible pathway from the infrastructure investment to additional economic activity.
The value of an infrastructure investment depends partly on the opportunities it creates afterward.
What industries might follow?
Data centers are often evaluated as individual real-estate developments.
That may be too narrow.
More robust electrical infrastructure and telecommunications connectivity could support future industrial operations, advanced manufacturing, technology businesses, research, commercial services, and other electricity- or connectivity-dependent employers.
A data center could also generate demand for specialized contractors, electrical maintenance, facilities operations, engineering, and technical services.
But those opportunities should be evaluated as potential second-order benefits, not credited to a project merely because they sound plausible.
A city should want to know whether its industrial sites could support additional employers, whether utilities have available capacity, whether telecommunications providers can offer competitively priced service, and whether workforce programs could develop relevant skills.
There is a difference between creating the conditions for future industry and promising that industry will appear.
This is where disciplined economic-development planning becomes valuable.
The right project can still be in the wrong location.
One finding from our Cle Elum research is particularly important.
A development's economic merits and its site suitability are separate questions.
The proposed location must be examined for its proximity to homes, schools, roads, utilities, and sensitive land uses.
Noise, air emissions, backup generation, water use, emergency response, wildfire conditions, and long-term compatibility all deserve serious scrutiny.
An attractive fiscal projection cannot make those questions disappear.
But concerns about a specific site should not automatically end the evaluation of whether the broader investment could be beneficial elsewhere.
Our research uses four scenarios: the proposed site, another location within Cle Elum, another location elsewhere in Upper Kittitas County, and no data center, including other realistic land uses.
Each scenario should be evaluated against comparable assumptions.
The distinction between sites within and outside the city matters. A county location might preserve regional construction and employment benefits while changing which government receives tax revenue.
That trade-off belongs in the analysis.
Think in decades, not announcement cycles.
Communities often make these decisions under pressure.
They may face fiscal constraints, deteriorating infrastructure, limited employment opportunities, housing affordability challenges, or competing demands for municipal services.
Cle Elum's ongoing Chapter 9 bankruptcy provides an especially consequential setting for examining future revenue sources.
A stronger and more diversified tax base could improve long-term fiscal flexibility. But no proposed development should be presented as a solution to an existing judgment without verified cash-flow analysis and an understanding of the applicable legal restrictions.
The larger challenge is to distinguish short-term construction spending from recurring revenue, recurring revenue from legally available cash, and economic activity from lasting community value.
A responsible assessment must also consider the alternative use of the land, the timing and ownership of infrastructure, operational risks, and what happens if the facility changes ownership, reduces investment, or never reaches its announced capacity.
That is how an economic-development proposal should be evaluated: as a long-term investment decision with costs, constraints, alternatives, and measurable results.
The question I believe every community should ask
Instead of beginning with:
Do we want a data center?
I would begin with:
What would this development measurably enable our community to do, economically and financially, that would otherwise be difficult or impossible?
Then I would ask what the benefits cost, who receives them, who bears the risks, whether the proposed location is suitable, and which commitments can be made enforceable.
A town's future should not be decided solely by the enthusiasm of a developer or the fears of its opponents.
It deserves the same financial discipline, operational analysis, and long-term judgment that should govern any major investment.
Communities can preserve what makes them distinctive while remaining open to industries that might help sustain their future.
But those goals require evidence, good planning, and the willingness to test assumptions on all sides.
The objective is not simply to attract investment. It is to turn the right investment into lasting public value.
Research foundation
This framework draws on independent research developed through WeHeartCleElumRoslyn (WHCER) and two complementary books.
Charles L. Marohn Jr.’s Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity provides the municipal-finance lens: durable tax revenue and public value should be measured against the full lifecycle costs of the infrastructure and services a community must support.
Susan Crawford’s Fiber: The Coming Tech Revolution—and Why America Might Miss It provides the connectivity lens: high-capacity fiber can enable economic opportunity, but ownership, competition, last-mile service, and access conditions determine who benefits.
These books provide interpretive frameworks. They do not predict the proposed facility’s tax receipts, employment, infrastructure obligations, or local fiber buildout.
Further reading: Cle Elum Data Center Economic & Fiscal Analysis · Public Records & Meeting Library · IEA Energy and AI · Washington JLARC 2026 Data Center Tax Review
Disclosure: This article reflects independent research and analysis. Reported project characteristics, illustrative financial scenarios, and potential economic benefits should not be confused with verified outcomes or a project endorsement.