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Tech Firms Repurpose Vacant U.S. Corporate Parks for Data Centers Amid Revenue Pressures and Local Concerns
Tech companies are increasingly converting empty suburban and rural corporate parks into data centers to support next-generation AI, driven by towns seeking business tax revenue. Local leaders express concerns over industrial traffic, while design firms work to improve data center aesthetics.
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As tech firms compete for space to build facilities that will power next-generation artificial intelligence, Semafor reported. This shift comes as sprawling office campuses are being abandoned due to companies relocating offices closer to urban centers.
Town leaders, however, have expressed reservations about converting these sites into industrial plants because of the associated trucking traffic, data centers bring concerns about power, and residential housing doesn’t bring in the kind of tax revenue that businesses do, said John Santora, CEO of WeWork.
“What’s happening now is they realize as they begin to sit there for four or five years, they don’t have the tax base either way,” Santora said Thursday in Washington, DC.
Diane Hoskins, global cochair at design firm Gensler, echoed the sentiment: “That industrial park — it might be a data center,” she said. In response, some tech companies have hired design firms like Gensler to spruce up the exteriors, Semafor previously reported.
WeWork is a sponsor of Semafor World Economy, but Santora’s comments were made in an unsponsored editorial interview. Residents in areas where data centers are being built have opposed them due to environmental and quality-of-life concerns, highlighting ongoing tensions between economic development and community impact.
