The Site Selection Checklist Is Missing a Line Item

The numbers changed fast

In the first six weeks of 2026 alone, more than 300 data center bills were introduced across over 30 states, including 14 statewide moratorium proposals. As of June, more than 100 local moratoriums were already in place. New York's governor issued a one year executive order pausing construction on any facility drawing 50 megawatts or more. Virginia added a new electricity surtax aimed squarely at data center load. Arizona froze data center tax breaks for three years.

This isn't background noise. Projects worth tens of billions of dollars have been blocked, rezoned out of existence, or delayed past their financing windows this year, largely at the county and city level, in jurisdictions that a year ago were rolling out the red carpet.

Why this is a tenant problem, not just a developer problem

It's tempting for a company signing a lease to treat entitlement risk as the landlord's problem. That logic doesn't hold anymore, for two reasons.

First, timeline risk transfers directly. Delayed approvals mean delayed energization, which means delayed capacity delivery against a compute roadmap that was probably built assuming the opposite. Lenders size deals around expected timelines; when local approvals slip, financing contingencies and re-negotiated terms follow, and that risk doesn't stay contained to the developer's balance sheet.

Second, and less obvious: reputational risk flows up the value chain, not down. Local opposition rarely distinguishes between the company that poured the concrete and the company whose logo will eventually run on the servers inside it. When a community fight becomes a news story, the AI or cloud company renting the capacity is often the more recognizable name attached to it. Operators are increasingly absorbing reputational exposure that was really generated by their tenants' industry, which means smart tenants have a direct interest in how well that exposure is being managed on their behalf.

The opposition is broader, and softer, than the headlines suggest

Recent polling puts full support for a proposed local data center at only around 10%. But it also puts hard opposition well below what the news coverage implies. The largest group, roughly a third of respondents, falls into "it depends on the details." That's the real audience. Roughly three-quarters of people say they're open to a project if they see a tangible benefit.

What actually moves the "it depends" voters, in rough order of impact: a visible electricity rebate or rate protection, a local-hire commitment, a specific property tax structure, and a stated water-use limit. None of these require reinventing site strategy. They require sequencing.

What to ask before you sign

For companies evaluating sites or landlords, a short list of questions can surface a lot about a project's actual risk profile, beyond the pro forma:

Has community engagement started before the project went public, or is it starting now, at the first hearing? Outreach that begins after opposition has already organized is playing defense. Outreach that begins before disclosure is the only version that actually shapes terms rather than reacting to them.

Is there a specific, public commitment on water use, not a general statement about efficiency? Vague sustainability language reads as evasive to a local audience that has already heard the "actual water use is comparable to X" argument misapplied elsewhere. A concrete number, communicated proactively, is a materially different message than the same number offered defensively in response to a hostile question.

Is there a rate-neutrality or rebate structure with utility regulators and ratepayer advocates, not just with the utility? The electricity-cost narrative is the single largest driver of local opposition in current polling, ahead of water use by a wide margin. A commitment that only exists between the developer and the utility company doesn't reach the audience that needs to hear it.

Is there a local-hire commitment, and has it been discussed with building trades unions specifically? Trade unions tend to be structurally supportive of these projects when hiring commitments are real, and they function as a credible validator in front of both local officials and state legislators, in a way that a corporate press release cannot.

Is the political and communications function integrated with the project team from before entitlement work starts, or was it brought in after the first council meeting went badly? This is probably the single best predictor available. Projects with an integrated, bipartisan engagement plan from day one are managing a known set of risks on a known timeline. Projects assembling that plan in response to the first hearing are managing an unknown set of risks on someone else's timeline, and that timeline is the one your lease start date depends on.

The underlying pattern

None of the individual objections to data centers are new: cost, water, jobs, noise. What's changed is that these objections now have electoral consequences attached to them, in both parties, which means they're no longer purely local land-use questions. A council vote today can become a recall next year and a legislative agenda item the year after that.

For tenants, that means political and community risk belongs in site diligence next to power and fiber, not as an afterthought handled entirely by the landlord. The developers doing this well are treating it as infrastructure to be built in advance, on the same timeline as the substation. The ones treating it as a communications problem to solve after the fact are the ones showing up in the headlines.

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