A data center developer is paying a Pennsylvania town to like it.
NorthPoint Development wants to build a 1,300-acre AI data center campus near Hazle, Pennsylvania, at a cost of $45 million for the site itself. In June, the company sent every household in town a letter offering a $10,000 "grant" to help win support. NorthPoint also dangled another $120 million over 15 years for community projects and the local police department if the project gets approved. Residents weren't impressed: many are calling the payment a bribe, and some have refused it outright.
The median household income in Hazle is about $60,000, well below the US median of $87,000, which is exactly why $10,000 looked like real leverage. But locals worry the real costs - polluted water, noisy gas turbines, higher energy bills, falling property values - will outweigh one check. Those are the same complaints showing up near data centers nationwide, now sharpened by the Trump administration exempting AI data centers from environmental protection requirements.
Paying residents to accept a data center is a new tactic, but the math hasn't changed: a company offering $10,000 to settle concerns about $45 million, and up to $165 million, of infrastructure risk is still asking neighbors to take the short end of the deal.