Data Center Developers Battle For Hearts And Minds For Their Projects

A groundswell of community opposition to new data centers is forcing developers to invest in charm offensives to convince local officials that the asset class can be good for their communities.

Doing community outreach is worth it, data center developers said at Bisnow’s Data Center Investment Conference and Expo Southeast. Developers can either enlist community members as advocates or face them as adversaries, said Andre Patrick, vice president of the engineering consulting firm Introba.

Too often, he said, the industry shortchanges community engagement.

“We’ve done a very poor job in that regard,” said Patrick during the March 4 event at the Atlanta Marriott Marquis. “Thus, you see pushback, not just in any single region but throughout the U.S. as a whole.”

Public backlash can lengthen the time and costs for developers to get data centers up and running or derail projects altogether. 

In the second quarter of 2025 alone, $98B in data center projects were either blocked or delayed because of local opposition, according to Data Center Watch, an initiative of artificial intelligence security firm 10a Labs. While power availability remains the top factor in data center site selection, community sentiment is rising in importance, according to industry analysts.

“Community involvement is becoming a key driver in permitting and zoning approvals,” CBRE noted in its 2025 data center trends report.

A data center often is a novel type of commercial real estate for many markets, and local regulators may have many questions and concerns as they get up to speed. Getting out in front of those questions may assuage fears before they become problematic, CloudHQ Senior Manager Andrew Tupper said.

“We hold dozens of town halls, not just with the county officials and the zoning people but with the residents as well. And listening to their feedback is critical,” Tupper said. “It really is, respectfully, about educating your local communities, the local stakeholders.” 

Many municipalities will need to regulate a new type of building use, and it’s important for developers to keep this in mind, DC Blox Senior Vice President David Armistead said.

“When we look at some of the sites, it might be zoned heavy industrial, but data centers may not be a named use,” he said. “In the context of large community pushback, that can be problematic for getting a building permit in the first place.”

Effective developers now factor extensive community engagement into their development timelines, DC Blox CEO Jeff Uphues said. His firm will typically engage at the local, regional and state levels, he said. 

“You have to go to a place where you're welcomed, but you're only welcomed if you spend the time with a lot of genuine engagement,” Uphues said.

If local concerns are not addressed by developers, grassroots organizations can fill the void and may coalesce opposition to a project. Data Center Watch tracked 53 grassroots activist groups in 17 states targeting 30 projects in Q2 2025. And local opposition increasingly is cross-pollinating with other groups, the report finds. 

“As development expands and media attention intensifies, local groups are learning from one another,” the Data Center Watch report states.

If all politics is local, as the saying goes, then local concerns can lead to statewide hurdles to development. Opposition to new data center development has demonstrated itself to be a rare bipartisan phenomenon in the past couple of years. The state legislatures in Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia are considering new taxes or regulations on data center development. 

One of the first victims of political pushback at the state level may be incentives. On Friday, the Georgia State Senate passed a bill that aims to rescind sales tax breaks for data center operators, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. 

When it comes to community engagement, Armistead said it’s not enough to remind local residents that data centers add to public coffers, as that could be too abstract of a concept. Instead, data center developers are getting creative to appeal to local communities in more direct ways.

“It may be things like contributing to a new community athletic park, or something like that, where the community really sees the benefit of you engaging,” Armistead said.

With the gold rush of data center development, communities may also be wary after hearing news of projects that fell apart during the development process. Developers can help their cause by showing they have the know-how and financing to be taken seriously, Edged Chief Operating Officer Mitchell Fonseca said.  

“We try to show up with the check and say, ‘Hey, I'm here. I want 200 megawatts of power. Here's the check. How many of the developers that you're talking to today are willing to cut you a check that fast? Because 90% of them are not real,’” Fonseca said.