Experts Urge Communities to Use Their Leverage When Negotiating Data Center Pitches
Date Posted: March 31, 2026
Posted In: Discussion,
From St. Louis Magazine: It’s set to be a busy week for data centers in the St. Louis region, as multiple local governments hold public meetings to consider the developments
Monday night has the Foristell Board of Aldermen making the final decision on whether to annex over 200 acres for a likely data center development. The action on Tuesday moves south to Franklin County, where the Planning and Zoning Commission there will again consider county-wide regulations for data centers, as well as rezoning requests attached to two distinct multi-billion dollar developments. And on Thursday morning the City of St. Louis hosts a conditional use hearing where a recommendation will be rendered for the data center pitched next to The Armory in Midtown.
The meetings this week, like so many before them, are likely to feature skeptical locals pushing back on the projects. It’s a dynamic that’s not entirely surprising to Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who studies tech development.
“There’s a lot of reasons that suspicion and ultimately the kind of backlash conditions we’re seeing now have grown,” he says. “There’s a deeper narrative. This is not a superficial community backlash in one or two places.”
Data centers have existed for years, but what’s new now are the conditions under which they’re being developed, Muro explains. The tech industry’s “demand for scale as almost a philosophical mantra” has given way to bigger facilities and greater competition among the largest firms, moving as fast as possible to meet growing demand, he says.
Across the U.S., Muro says there are a finite number of “highly desirable, gargantuan, mega sites” with easy access to resources that power and cool such facilities, ratcheting up the speed and competitiveness among developers and companies looking to get deals done. That should give communities leverage when a developer comes to town, Muro argues.
Instead, the accelerated deal-making process has often come with elements Muro finds problematic, such as the “widespread” use of NDAs, which can create suspicion. “The [negotiations] are already very asymmetric because they often pit global billion dollar, trillion dollar companies with undermanned, outgunned local officials,” he says. “And the deals are often very secretive.”