{"id":256599,"date":"2026-06-05T17:46:49","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T17:46:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/256599\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T17:46:49","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T17:46:49","slug":"kevin-oleary-pleads-with-locals-to-allow-his-massive-data-center-if-he-shrinks-it-down-to-the-size-of-one-manhattan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/256599\/","title":{"rendered":"Kevin O\u2019Leary Pleads With Locals to Allow His Massive Data Center If He Shrinks It Down to the Size of One Manhattan"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cShark Tank\u201d investor Kevin O\u2019Leary wants to build a menacingly large data center facility near the Great Salt Lake in Utah that would be over twice the size of Manhattan<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But his plans for the \u201cStratos Hyperscale Data Center\u201d has got locals outraged and spooked. And despite his earlier defiance that he would never downsize his project, O\u2019Leary is now agreeing to do just that after state lawmakers demanded he scale back his ambitions.<\/p>\n

Going forward, it\u2019ll be the size of just one Manhattan.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have no choice,\u201d a defeated O\u2019Leary told NBC News<\/a> at the Washington AI Network\u2019s AI Honors gala on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

The Stratos facility was originally envisioned to span over 40,000 acres on a stretch of unincorporated land in Box Elder County, and was greenlit by the county\u2019s three-member commission last month<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But locals had been fiercely protesting the data center<\/a> ever since it was proposed and haven\u2019t relented even after its approval, mirroring the widespread backlash to data center construction across the country<\/a>. The protests are driven by fears over the sprawling facilities\u2019 impact on local water supplies, energy prices, and noise pollution. Water concerns are especially salient in Utah, where the Great Salt Lake has been rapidly shrinking<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On Monday, as the outrage reached a fever pitch, Utah senate president J. Stuart Adams, a Republican, sent O\u2019Leary a letter<\/a> asking that he reduce the size of the project by 75 percent to \u201climit impacts on the region and broader environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI share the concerns of my constituents and hope Mr. O\u2019Leary responds appropriately and implements the changes needed to address them,\u201d Adams said in a statement<\/a> at the time.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Leary quickly let The Salt Lake Tribune know what he thought of Adams\u2019 proposal: it was \u201coutrageous\u201d he told the newspaper<\/a>, adding that he thought the figure was a typo.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not walking away,\u201d O\u2019Leary emphasized, barely containing his rage. \u201cIt\u2019s not who I am. I don\u2019t work that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

But in the end, he did walk away \u2014 or at least, bow to the pressure. On Thursday, O\u2019Leary sent a cordial letter<\/a> to Adams agreeing to cut 19,430 acres from the project, as well as remove a 620-acre parcel in the northeast region of the project near the highway.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a 50 percent reduction rather than 75 percent, but Adams sounded pleased. O\u2019Leary also vowed to address environmental concerns, agree to an independent scientific analysis of the facility\u2019s thermal load, and to put any excess water back into the Great Salt Lake.<\/p>\n

\u201cO\u2019Leary\u2019s concessions in response to the demand letter I sent are a positive step forward,\u201d he said that same day, as reported by ABC4 News<\/a>. \u201cThe concerns raised by Utahns are valid, which is why I have pushed for meaningful changes to ensure those issues are addressed before any project can move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

But O\u2019Leary sounded far more bitter about the saga in an interview with NBC News. He accused Adams of demanding the reduction \u201cfor political reasons,\u201d and re-litigated his conspiratorial claims that anti data center protestors were being funded by China<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The details of the agreement still need to be hashed out and formalized on paper, however. So our guess is that this saga is far from over.<\/p>\n

More on AI: Data Centers Have Become Shockingly Unpopular, Poll Finds<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cShark Tank\u201d investor Kevin O\u2019Leary wants to build a menacingly large data center facility near the Great Salt…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":256600,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[3220,87956,37386,75,84,83,6970,9,24,63,99988],"class_list":["post-256599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-data-center","tag-great-salt-lake","tag-kevin-oleary","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-nbc-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-stuart-adams"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}