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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

#301

Post by ProllyInfamous »

phire wrote: post #37
iamdelirium wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't true? San Francisco is consolidated in 1856 and according to Wikipedia, a century before Nashville (1963). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco#cite_note-Coy_19... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nashville,_Tennessee

I think they are claiming it was the first merger of a multiple cities and a county. Rather than something that was originally created a merged county/city (like San Francisco) or a merger where the city/county boundaries were already identical (like Philadelphia and Philadelphia County) Which might be true? But it's a really hyper-specific claim that's far less impressive than it first sounds.

The craziest thing about Metro Nashville (the city/county entity we are discussing) is that the wealthiest enclaves (independent cities) voted to retain certain city-powers (because of course they did!) – mostly Southern Davidson County, as you approach WilCo/Franklin.

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

#302

Post by f4c39012 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #230
happymellon wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 st…

You're missing the point. Towns come out ahead when the people living there come out ahead. I'm not arguing with your math, but your math is also a straight line to a town with no people at all being better. Towns are for _people_.

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

#303

Post by no-name-here »

selfhoster1312 wrote: post #276
no-name-here wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the user instead of in big centralized facilities Although that would be exponentially worse in terms of electricity and resource use, etc. - instead 1 TPU handling x,000 customers per month, now you need to build and power n,000 separate devices, where the vast majority of them are idle the vast majority of the time, and even then without all of the more efficient power, batching, etc that DCs offer. > urban areas…

That's working under the (imo wrong) assumption that LLMs are what we need/want. First, because pushing toward the user can happen as shared hosting in your municipality and doesn't have to be in every home. Second, because if you take slop, adtech, and surveillance out of the equation, the material impact is several orders of magnitude less than what's being built today. Or for what it's worth, several orders of mag…

> shared hosting in your municipality

Wouldn't that be even worse in terms of NIMBYism?

1. Every single municipality would have AI data center "hosting in your municipality".

2. You'd have to majorly overbuild every municipality's capacity, as usage would likely have peak hours and 'dead' hours each day based on work, sleep, etc. if usage is local to that municipality.

> several orders of magnitude less than what's already built in terms of DC capacity.

Are you saying you believe already-built data centers are 100 times (2 orders of magnitude) as much as needed? I presume this is not what you think will actually happen in the real world though?

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

#305

Post by 10u152 »

da_chicken wrote: post #154
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...

No, it's exactly the truth: https://www.ncsl.org/fiscal/subsidizing-servers-how-states-a... The legislatures are betting that the data centers stick around or bring in jobs. They won't. They think something that expensive must require a ton of jobs to maintain. It doesn't. They need low taxes, cheap land, cheap water, and cheap power.

I work in construction, - data centres included - in Australia.

From my experience you’re mostly right, however it’s more like, in order of priority: power availability, water availability, data availability, land price. Cost to upgrade upstream power transmission dwarfs all other costs.

I’d note that after construction ongoing jobs are minimal. Specific example: $2B aud datacentre will support 30-60 jobs after completion. And probably 50% of those are low skill/income security,cleaning maintenance etc.

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

#306

Post by amanaplanacanal »

PlasmaPower wrote: post #48
asutekku wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Golf courses do not emit noise, they are relatively nice looking and they are not a threat for people to be unemployed.

Yeah, those might be some of the other factors. My point is just that actual water use does not explain datacenter pushback well, despite being a predominant argument against them.

I hear electricity prices and noise about as often as water usage.

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

#308

Post by [deleted] »

otterley wrote: post #182
sophacles wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's always fun to watch AI zombies wrestle with the idea that sometimes the real humans have different priorities than they do. Usually people are against a lot of those power projects because those very same projects also seem to always raise rates and never deliver the promises of long-term lower rates.

Success doesn’t always look like lower rates, particularly when demand is ever-growing (even when there aren’t new data centers). Success looks like rates not going up faster than inflation, and reliable delivery. I remember well the rolling blackouts in CA in the late 1990s and that sucked . Even the ones in Texas weren’t that long ago. Also, calling well-intended people with whom you disagree “zombies” is inappropr…

[deleted]

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

#310

Post by e40 »

deepsun wrote: post #271
eagleinparadise wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in commercial real and even I'm going to go NIMBY mode on this lol. This property shares a large boundary to the zoo and I have a very hard time believing you won't cause an impact (noise pollution eg) to the animals next door. Is there any evidence anywhere of a totally sound proof, unintrusive mega data center? I have not seen anything.

IMO noise pollution is the easiest one to solve: just put all the AC fans on the far side of the datacenter. If not enough, surround with noise absorbing panels. If not enough, just get a different fan design, more coolers, and run them at half speed. They can even afford Noctua :) I bet nearby rail yard produces way more loud noises. Datacenter is like the cleanest and most ecofriendly business you can imagine.

> Datacenter is like the cleanest and most ecofriendly business you can imagine.

Tell that to the residents of Memphis.

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