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Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo

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Re: Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo

#221

Post by jrowen »

It blows my mind that (my fellow) Americans are so averse to taxation that they don't even consider that option. Whether you're worried about jobs or faraway tech elites or resource usage....just go straight to the source and use freaking taxes. Blocking is so pointless. All this political will could be a huge opportunity for these locales but instead it's petulant obstructionism.

The Millenium Scholarship program in Nevada paid for tons of kids' education by taxing casinos. It's not perfect but it's channeling economic activity to the people.

Re: Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo

#222

Post by tptacek »

rtpg wrote: post #216
tptacek wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, no, all these buildings have wildly overprovisioned parking. Most of the lots are empty. I'd encourage people wondering about this to just go drive out to an office complex in a suburb near them and look. Second, no, these jobs are not generally filled by neighbors of the office complexes, or even people from the muni where the office complex is situated. The big box for 50 jobs is also a nicer building to hav…

> Most of the lots are empty. Is this not the same for the data centers? Have data centers solved parking provisioning in a way office parks haven't? > Second, no, these jobs are not generally filled by neighbors of the office complexes, or even people from the muni where the office complex is situated. I mean again... are the data center jobs like ... guaranteed to be people in the local area? Isn't the nature of th…

No, it's not the same! At least not at the data centers I've seen. Go look at the Aurora CH1 CyrusOne DC and then beam yourself down 88 a bit to the nearest office building and compare. Data centers have parking, but not a lot of it. CHI1 is ringed by a single two-sided line of spots. Every big box retailer is surrounded by an ocean of asphalt larger than CHI1 itself.

Re: Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo

#224

Post by lovich »

bruce511 wrote: post #175
darth_avocado wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try living next to a constant 80-100 dB hum 24x7. You’d not be complaining about people being irrational.

I'm sure there are data centers that make a noise. And if you're firing up a generator that's a separate issue. But the noise from computer fans and power supplies is easy to ameliorate and can be a trivial permit requirement. The noise is all high-frequency which means most anything will stop it. Frankly building an earth berm around the site would kill all the noise and make it better to look at. Throw in some tree…

> The noise is all high-frequency which means most anything will stop it. Frankly building an earth berm around the site would kill all the noise and make it better to look at. Throw in some trees and you're done.

Have any of these data centers done this? All the ones I’ve seen haven’t even put up a sound baffling wall. If a data center’s owner has taken steps to ameliorate or completely prevent their negative externalities then opposition to them definitely looks like NIMBYism.

If, however, you’re just saying they _could_ prevent the problems, but then never do, I’m even more inclined to support the people telling them to fuck off.

Re: Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo

#225

Post by namdnay »

tommica wrote: post #218
namdnay wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The water sediment thing had nothing to do with the building being a data center I think? Any form of construction would interfere with people drinking well water next to it

Isn't that enough to rethink the construction - it takes a while to build a data center, and I would not be happy that I have to suffer with shitty water because a data center is being built for years.

What I mean is that it’s got nothing to do with data centers. Saying “data centers pollute water” is misleading, in these situations

1) we’re talking about people pulling unfiltered untreated well water

2) any building would have had exactly the same effect.

Re: Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo

#226

Post by [deleted] »

tptacek wrote: post #222
rtpg wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most of the lots are empty. Is this not the same for the data centers? Have data centers solved parking provisioning in a way office parks haven't? > Second, no, these jobs are not generally filled by neighbors of the office complexes, or even people from the muni where the office complex is situated. I mean again... are the data center jobs like ... guaranteed to be people in the local area? Isn't the nature of th…

No, it's not the same! At least not at the data centers I've seen. Go look at the Aurora CH1 CyrusOne DC and then beam yourself down 88 a bit to the nearest office building and compare. Data centers have parking, but not a lot of it. CHI1 is ringed by a single two-sided line of spots. Every big box retailer is surrounded by an ocean of asphalt larger than CHI1 itself.

[deleted]

Re: Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo

#227

Post by tptacek »

MrDrMcCoy wrote: post #220
tptacek wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Office buildings are not more attractive than data centers; that's my whole argument. In format, massing, and design, data centers essentially are office buildings, just with drastically less parking. Asphalt is the biggest eyesore in commercial real estate. (Data centers consume immaterial amounts of water.)

You'd take a featureless, opaque warehouse over a structure with windows and architecture that was intended to stand out? The asphalt doesn't have to be an eyesore if planned well, either. Copious vegetation woven throughout, painted teal or with murals instead of black, a policy of "after the following hours, locals are allowed to play roller-hockey and tennis here.", host regular farmer's markets, etc.

I'd love to see a Google Maps picture of a large, attractive parking lot.

Re: Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo

#228

Post by pibaker »

jrowen wrote: post #221

It blows my mind that (my fellow) Americans are so averse to taxation that they don't even consider that option. Whether you're worried about jobs or faraway tech elites or resource usage....just go straight to the source and use freaking taxes. Blocking is so pointless. All this political will could be a huge opportunity for these locales but instead it's petulant obstructionism. The Millenium Scholarship program in…

Why would the data center operators pay extra taxes to your city when they can just build them somewhere else that gives them a tax break instead?

Re: Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo

#229

Post by kulahan »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #206
locknitpicker wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Opposition to data centers is like 90% hatred of Silicon Valley and its obstinate elites. One they amplified by trying to build these things sneakily. This is utter nonsense, and reeks of a desperate and deep denial. I mean, you might as well rationalize your denial by claiming they don't like you because they don't like you. Have you tried actually listening to what critics have to say? Nimby doesn't just pop up o…

> Have you tried actually listening to what critics have to say? Nimby I wouldn’t dismiss the critics as NIMBY. They are closer to fuck it, nowhere. Some opposition is just anti-AI or misinformed about e.g. water use. But most of them have legitimate complaints about, on one hand, noise and power prices and, on the other hand, the shocking lack of contribution to local employment or taxes from these structures mintin…

I’ve heard there’s misinformation regarding water use. As far as I’ve heard, these data centers use quite a bit. I imagine they just use them for cooking and spit it back out warmer (though if we’re going to do that, I’d prefer we do it cooling a nuclear power plant, personally…)

Is this not accurate? Are there any good resources that aren’t like… these companies being super honest about how super good they are?

Re: Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo

#230

Post by AnthonyMouse »

happymellon wrote: post #188
tptacek wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the opposite of the truth. For instance: https://www.wglt.org/local-news/2026-08-04/dekalb-and-aurora...

How is spending $24 million a year on taxes not evidence that they lobbied, and received tax breaks and exemptions? The reason they picked that location was because they get reduced rates. 50% off energy taxes. Reduced property taxes. I could go on. https://siteselection.com/how-illinois-built-a-dream-home-fo... Unless your arguing an example of a data centre that only received a tax break rather than exemption?

Property taxes are ordinarily a percentage of the value of the land and structures because in most cases it has some approximation to services consumed. A building with twice as many condo units might require twice as many police, create twice as much traffic, etc.

A large data center could plausibly be sitting on a piece of land worth a million dollars and then have a billion dollars worth of equipment in it, but still not require any more police officers or traffic lanes etc. than the million dollar piece of land sitting next to it. It might even require less.

It's easy for a town to come out ahead from that even after providing significant tax breaks. When you have something consuming the same unit of services while having an assessed value of 1000x the typical amount, what percentage tax break they would have to get before the government isn't coming out ahead?

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