NorthPoint offers each Hazle Township resident $10,000 for a 1,300-acre data center

The $165 million NorthPoint proposes to invest in the township ^[2] is the figure to measure the offer against. Paid out in full, the $45 million in resident payments ^[17] would equal about 27% of that investment ^[18]. That money goes to the township where the building would sit. Fortune describes the letters reaching Hazle Township residents ^[3]. The organized opposition it reports is along the utility's line route in Sugarloaf, where homeowners are fighting the power company ^[4][5]. Fortune does not report how many Hazle residents accepted or whether the township has voted, so the record does not yet show the cash failing.

If Hazle Township approves and the line goes up over the protests, the cash did its job. A slower path has the 20 protests holding up the line while an approved site waits for power ^[5]. The third path has Amazon, which says it is "evaluating multiple sites across the Commonwealth" ^[7], signing elsewhere, with NorthPoint left holding a consent bill and no tenant. We think the second path is the likeliest source of delay, because the payments target one township and the formal objections target the line. The counter-thesis is that the utility is already threatening eminent domain ^[4], and if Hazle takes the money the remaining dispute covers about 30 properties. We would be wrong if the protests are resolved and the township approves on NorthPoint's schedule.

The politics have moved. About 20 years ago Hazleton passed the Illegal Immigration Relief Act on the strength of a white, working-class base ^[13]. Fortune describes today's data center opponents as mixed in class and party ^[14]. In Gallup's poll, Democrats and Republicans are 12 points apart ^[19], and a majority of each opposes local construction ^[9]. Data Center Watch counted active opposition groups rising 2.1-fold in a single quarter ^[20].

Tatishe Nteta, director of UMass Poll, blamed how tech companies have marketed the buildings ^[16]. "There has been little to no clear communication of the benefits, economic or otherwise, that are associated with data centers for everyday Americans," he told Fortune ^[12]. Annie Vinatieri, a Sugarloaf Township protester, said the coalition holds despite its differences. "We can maybe disagree on the political finer points of things, but we can find this very real camaraderie in the midst of everything," she said ^[8].

In our view, developers take on these fights and the tenant chooses from whichever sites come through them. Crypto Briefing reported that community groups and state officials have already halted or delayed several planned developments in rural Pennsylvania ^[21].