This small town's residents battled over a giant data center campus. It's a drama happening across rural America.

Giant tech companies often seek out data-center land in
rural towns. The sites feed the AI industry.

When big tech companies look for cheap land and energy to house and feed giant data campuses, they often shop in rural America. In the small town of Peculiar, Missouri, many residents worked to reject a data center proposal by developer Diode Ventures, which represented a secret corporate tech giant.

Their refusal to allow the land planned for the data site to be rezoned pitted residents against each other and their town officials, reports Eli Tan of The New York Times. "Residents described a web of distrust filled with nondisclosure agreements, hurt feelings and a mysterious entity vying to become the town’s new neighbor."

Executives from Diode Ventures plied residents and town officials with promises of an economic "boon," but some folk weren't sure. Becky Wiseman, whose property would border the Peculiar site, and her neighbors "decided to visit data center campuses for Meta and Google in Nebraska and Iowa, which were also 'hyperscale' like the one proposed in Peculiar," Tan writes. "When they arrived, they were terrified at what they saw and heard — the constant hum of generators behind guard towers."

With that, the stage for a David and Goliath battle between concerned residents and Diode supporters was set. "Signs that read 'No Data Centers' sprouted up in yards and windows across town," Tan reports. "So many people started showing up at planning and zoning meetings that Peculiar officials had to move them from City Hall to the Lions Club, a larger venue a mile down the road."

Diode executives were caught off-guard by some of the town's intense resistance. "Behind the scenes, Diode had been working with Peculiar’s mayor, Doug Stark, and city administrator, Mickey Ary," Tan explains. "Over virtual meetings and lunches at City Hall with Stark and Ary, Diode executives laid out a plan to win over Peculiar’s hearts and minds."

Proposal debates and bickering raged on in Peculiar until the aldermen voted this past September. "By unanimous decision, the data center zoning was rejected. It is unclear where Diode will take its project," Tan reports. But Peculiar's conflict isn't unique. The same saga is "playing out in small towns across the country as tech giants look to build hundreds of new data centers — often lured by tax abatements — to house the thousands of computers that would power the booming and energy-intensive artificial intelligence industry."