Local Opposition Kills $100M Data Center Project In Hot Oregon Market

A planned $100M data center in Oregon has been scrapped following opposition from local residents.

Startup data center developer Roundhouse Digital Infrastructure had planned to build out a 10-megawatt data center in the Port of Cascade Locks, Oregon, a community on the Columbia River about 40 miles east of Portland. The proposed facility would have utilized a vacant industrial building in the city’s port complex and a 10-acre site nearby, both owned by the city. 

But on Thursday, Roundhouse and local officials jointly announced that they are no longer moving forward with the project. The decision to pull the plug on the planned development, first reported by The Oregonian, came amid significant opposition to the project from local residents, an increasingly common stumbling block for those looking to build new data centers in communities across the country.

“We just didn’t feel like there was enough public support to continue with it,” said Port of Cascade Locks Manager Jeremiah Blue, according to The Oregonian.

Local concerns about the proposed Cascade Locks data center focused on the amount of power the facility would use and the subsequent impact on the community’s future supply of electricity. There were also concerns about the viability of Roundhouse, a startup with no other data centers and a leadership team that had little digital infrastructure experience, unclear funding and a history of prior business dealing that ended in acrimony, according to The Oregonian.  

In June, opposition to the data center deal was among the key issues in local elections that saw voters recall a pair of officials who backed the project, with two other advocates for the data center losing their bids for re-election.

While data centers are a new issue in Cascade Locks, Oregon as a whole has become a hotbed of data center development. In January, Cushman & Wakefield had the Portland region tied with Northern Virginia atop its annual ranking of data center markets, which takes a variety of factors into account. 

The Portland suburb of Hillsboro has become a hub for hyperscalers attracted to its abundance of cheap land and renewable energy, along with low taxes and access to major trans-Pacific cables. Google also operates a large data center on the Columbia River in The Dalles, a 40-minute drive east of Cascade Locks. 

This kind of public opposition to data center development is becoming more common across the country. As the data center industry’s footprint expands into new markets beyond the borders of a handful of traditional hubs, residents, community groups and local politicians are increasingly aware of the concerns that surround data centers’ use of power and water, as well as other potential environmental impacts.

The epicenter of this wave of opposition has been in Virginia, home to more data centers than anywhere else in the world, where plans for massive campuses near residential areas or in rural communities have made digital infrastructure development above-the-fold news and, as in Cascade Locks, a central issue in local elections. 

It’s a problem for developers that experts expect will only become more widespread.

“I think what you're going to see is politicians take this up in other locations," Michael Rechtin, a partner in the data center practice at DLA Piper, told Bisnow in February. “I love this industry personally, but you need to start to think more about building in secondary and tertiary markets that are more welcoming and away from populated areas as much as you can get away with.”