Stratos: O'Leary's 40,000-acre Utah data center halted

The Stratos story began months before most Utahns had any idea anything was happening. Only a handful of people — some property owners in the remote valley, a few state officials at the Military Installation Development Authority, and some real estate developers — knew about the plan. Kevin O'Leary began asking around at the state level in early January, and the project was passed from the governor's office to MIDA, a state development agency that can override local land use and act as the municipal government in whatever project area it establishes. But by the time O'Leary was talking about it on Fox in late April, MIDA had approved it while the county — whose consent was needed — had not even been told.

Dzieza's reporting draws a parallel to the Foxconn project in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, where residents' hopes for a giant LCD factory were never realized. In Utah, the reaction was the opposite: rather than hope, people brought anger and fear. Social media is full of data center backlash stories, so people heard "data center" and knew broadly what was coming. What made Stratos different, Dzieza found, was that there were no pros to weigh against the costs — no excitement about jobs in an agricultural community, and no nostalgia for manufacturing. An activist told him data centers are the most unifying issue in politics right now, because there is something for everybody to hate.

The project has been wounded but is not dead. After local activists filed a referendum to repeal the county's consent, the county rejected it and the matter is now being litigated, with everyone paused until it resolves. Because the data center race is all about speed, the project no longer has the momentum it once had. Whether Stratos recovers may hinge on that litigation and on whether an activated activist network, scrutinizing lawmakers and regulators, makes the project too unpopular for anyone to want to be associated with.