As council members from Archbald and Jessup grapple with the process of potentially bringing data centers to their municipalities, Buddy Rizer, executive director of economic development for Loudoun County in Virginia \u2014 dubbed \u201cData Center Alley\u201d \u2014 offered some suggestions to consider before moving forward with specific projects.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first thing I tell everyone is if you\u2019re thinking about data centers, define your opportunity up front,\u201d he said. \u201cDetermine if you want them, where you want them, and how many you want. You need to be thoughtful and determine under what conditions you\u2019d want them. We didn\u2019t do that \u2014 we were kind of desperate and happy to take any money that was coming in the door. You have the opportunity to learn from all the things we\u2019ve learned from 19 years.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also critical to have a good grasp of the anticipated economic boost from each data center, Rizer added.<\/p>\n
\u201cI understood everything about my tax code before I proposed to the board what the impacts were going to be financially,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Rizer noted it\u2019s vital to realize when adding more data centers might interfere with other uses for property.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to know when to say when, and I think that\u2019s important,\u201d he said. \u201cAround 2019, we started to see warning signs that maybe we had extended a little further than what we had wanted to do. We haven\u2019t been proactively trying to attract data centers for six years now. We\u2019re still building them, but we want to make sure there are types of land leftover for others.\u201d<\/p>\n
Additionally, Rizer stressed something you have to turn down a project if they potential drawbacks outweigh the potential benefits.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you can integrate it into the community, it\u2019s a huge win,\u201d he said. \u201cI would stay away as far away from homes as you can and I would stay as close to power lines as you can. You don\u2019t want to create a situation where it\u2019s going to be a no win.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As council members from Archbald and Jessup grapple with the process of potentially bringing data centers to their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59533,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[2117,60,2119,201,182,28,178,180,179,181],"class_list":{"0":"post-59532","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scranton","8":"tag-archbald","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-jessup","11":"tag-lackawanna-county","12":"tag-local-news","13":"tag-pennsylvania","14":"tag-scranton","15":"tag-scranton-headlines","16":"tag-scranton-news","17":"tag-top-stories-stt"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59532\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}