Economic Development Director Ferdinand Rouse was the guest speaker at the Henderson-Vance Chamber of Commerce’s “State of” luncheon on Tuesday to talk about the current state of local economic development.
Most of Rouse’s presentation dealt with plans, goals, strategies that need to be in place to attract business and industry before he touched on what many in the audience, no doubt, were waiting to hear: data centers and data center development.
Using Richmond County as an example, he described what a scenario may look like for Vance County, providing several pros and cons for having a similar project locate in the area.
(In the embedded audio below you can hear what Rouse said.)
Richmond County, bordering South Carolina in the southern Piedmont region, landed an Amazon data center last year – a $10 billion project for a 20-building campus on about 800 acres.
Rouse listed one “pro” in the current climate is that data center developers aren’t calling the shots like they once did, asking for incentives, tax breaks and more from the places they want to locate.
“The landscape has drastically changed,” he noted, in large part because of pushback from communities and people who ask questions about possible negative impacts.
Data center developers are paying their way with regard to infrastructure and basically becoming a lot more intentional about being good community partners, he said.
When utility upgrades are needed, “they’ll foot the bill for that,” he said, so those costs aren’t passed on to rate payers.
“Cons” include the amount of water they require – 2.5 million gallons a day isn’t unusual. By comparison, the city of Henderson and Vance County combined use about 4 million gallons a day.
If energy suppliers have to make infrastructure upgrades to accommodate increased demand, those extra costs are passed to all rate payers.
Rouse said the question is not if customers will pay more, but whether they will benefit from having a project in their county that would add millions and millions to the tax rolls.
“Are you going to pay for another community’s success?” he asked.
It’s important to distinguish, Rouse continued, between what he called “good” actors and “bad” actors. “Knowing who you’re working with is a big part of this,” he said.
Another important aspect of economic development is being able to have ongoing, thoughtful conversations with community members to determine which projects are the best fits for the area.
He said the city and county need to continue to work together when opportunities present themselves.
“Our fates are tied together,” he said.
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