Where the money went, who moved, and why places win.
Welcome to Issue No. 4.
Every election season finds a villain, and this year a lot of campaigns cast a windowless building full of servers. Data centers turn up in $53 million of ads, on 34 local ballots and in a poll where 73% of voters want them somewhere else. Elsewhere in the issue, the L5 Mission Critical CEO who wants to run them anyway, building costs with no ceiling in sight, and for subscribers, a first look at whether Puget Sound has the welders for the Navy's next big dry dock.
DATA CENTERS
The data center vote
Campaigns have spent more than $53 million on ads that mention data centers, according to AdImpact data reported by the Cook Political Report. In a Quinnipiac poll, 73% of registered voters said they'd oppose an AI data center in their community, including 55% of Republicans. And on Nov. 3, voters will decide 34 local ballot measures on whether, where and how data centers get built, 20 of them in Ohio, according to Ballotpedia. In the four measures decided earlier this year, voters sided with more restrictions every time.
Nobody knows yet how many votes the issue will move. For site selection, though, the bigger effect may already be showing up in county zoning codes, moratoriums and the shortlists of companies that now cross off places with restrictions.
SECTOR INTELLIGENCE · DATA CENTERS
Who will run the new data centers
Matt Landek is CEO of L5 Mission Critical, the data center operations company Walbridge launched in September, and his bet is on the part of the business that comes after the ribbon cutting. As campuses move into Louisiana, Oklahoma, West Texas and West Virginia, someone has to staff them, and Landek wants to train workers from manufacturing, auto plants and energy to do it. He also wants to fix the five or six handoffs between builders, commissioning agents and operators where new facilities tend to break down.
He's realistic about training. "If we think that we're just gonna open a trade school and think that 500 people are just gonna come flooding in the doors, we're kidding ourselves," he said.
RESEARCH, FAST
Construction costs aren't coming back down
3% to 6% a year is the new normal. That's JLL's baseline for construction cost growth, roughly double the pre-2020 norm, after a 25% to 30% run-up over the past five years. It forecasts another 3.2% to 4.2% in North America in 2027. Electricians and carpenters were short in 64% of the markets JLL surveyed.
Demand keeps beating supply. U.S. industrial absorption topped new deliveries for a second straight quarter, Colliers reports, the strongest showing since 2022.
Investors still like industrial. Cap rates have crept up since spring, Cushman & Wakefield says, but buyers are chasing value-add buildings with shorter leases.
ON THE RADAR
Nine projects worth knowing
Our new daily briefs cover the investments that don't make the Tracker but still tell you where things are moving. This week's:
Hewlett Packard Enterprise · $75M, 75 jobs, Chippewa Falls, Wis. →
Greenheck Group · Nearly $300M, 700+ jobs, near Owasso, Okla. →
VDL Groep · About $77M, 120 jobs, Oakwood, Ga. →
Park Aerospace · About $65M, 100+ jobs, Tulsa International Airport →
Solstice Advanced Materials · $49M R&D hub, Buffalo →
Utili-Serve · $24.8M, 105 jobs, Conover, N.C. →
CP Industries · $21.7M, 78 jobs, McKeesport, Pa., over Alabama and Michigan →
R/S-Godwin Truck Body · $17M+, 65 jobs, Floyd County, Ky. →
Dawn Aerospace · $7.5M in state money for a spaceplane base, Burns Flat, Okla. →
BYLINER
Four stories worth your time
The Philadelphia Inquirer added up Pennsylvania's incentive spending under Gov. Shapiro: $121.8 million a year, more than double his predecessor's, with a review board that hasn't met since 2023. Reuters reported that SK Hynix is tying a new U.S. chip plant to Washington's export rules for its China fab. Wisconsin Watch found the state's own development agency signed at least five data center NDAs. And WFYI covered an Indiana report that found little evidence tax abatements work on their own.
MOVERS, SHAKERS & HOT JOBS
Who moved, and who's hiring
Nayan Bhakta · Promoted to president of McCarthy Building Companies' National Renewable Energy Group, which has built more than 18 gigawatts of solar since 2010.
Derrell Hartwick · Leaves the North Little Rock Chamber to become president and CEO of the Greater Fort Lauderdale Chamber of Commerce on Oct. 26.
Rachael Weiland · Named president and CEO of South Dakota Trade.
Awards: The Ohio Economic Development Association named Chase Eikenbary of the Regional Growth Partnership its 2026 Economic Developer of the Year.
Hot jobs: Five of this week's six openings top out at $195,000 or more, led by Thornton, Colo.'s planning and economic development director at up to $241,446. Hanwha Data Centers, Fleet Data Centers and a Dallas hyperscale developer are all hiring site and development directors.
THE 30-SECOND VERSION
$53M in data center ads and 34 local measures on the Nov. 3 ballot · 73% of voters oppose an AI data center nearby · L5's Matt Landek wants to train the people who run them · Building costs now rise 3% to 6% a year · Nine projects on our radar, from $7.5M to nearly $300M · Puget Sound has 2.9 times Hampton Roads' jobs and a thinner shipyard bench
That's the whole issue. You're caught up.
COMING NEXT
Sector Intelligence: Vista Site Selection's full Puget Sound vs. Hampton Roads shipyard workforce analysis. Across the Table: site selector Taylor Stepp on the risk nobody was measuring three years ago. Market Intelligence: Oklahoma City's long game, from Tinker to biomedical research. And we'll be in New Orleans for IEDC's annual conference starting Oct. 25.
One last thing
On the Radar is new this week, and it runs every day. If your organization announced a project we missed, send it our way. Same address for the move you're too modest to announce and anything we got wrong: [email protected].
Andy Greiner
Location Decision