Have you ever had a new neighbor knock on your door before they moved in? Maybe they brought cookies, introduced themselves and asked about the block – who handles the snow removal, where the kids play, what the neighborhood actually needs. That neighbor usually becomes the one people call when they need help, the one who gets invited to backyard barbecues, the one nobody complains about when they renovate their house.
Then there is the neighbor who shows up unannounced with a moving truck at dawn. Their house is well-built, their intentions are good and they have every right to be there. But the first conversation doesn't happen until people get suspicious, and by then the neighborhood has already decided who they are.
After decades working through data center development across this country, I must tell you, our industry has been the second neighbor far more often than the first. That’s not just a reputation problem. It’s a business problem – and it’s one we’re creating for ourselves.
The demand isn't slowing down. The opposition is getting organized
The AI buildout is unlike anything this industry has seen. Every major tech company is racing to build the infrastructure that AI runs on, which means data centers at a scale and geographic spread that would have been hard to imagine five years ago. Developers moved fast to meet that demand.
