Potential benefits
What data centers can offer Tooele County — and what to look for in any specific project..
Like the concerns page, we’ve sorted potential benefits into three honest categories: those that are well-documented across projects nationally, those that depend heavily on how a specific project is structured, and those that deserve close scrutiny when they appear in early project announcements.
● Well-documented benefits
Benefits consistently observed across data center projects
Their size varies by project, but their existence is well established.
- Property tax revenue
- Data centers are extraordinarily capital-intensive — they invest billions of dollars in buildings, servers, cooling equipment, and electrical infrastructure. That investment generates substantial property tax revenue, which funds schools, roads, public safety, and county services. Even with incentives applied, the long-term property tax base from a single hyperscale facility typically exceeds what the same land would generate in any other use.
- Sales tax on equipment purchases
- Servers are replaced on a three-to-five-year cycle. Each cycle generates sales tax revenue, depending on how state-level exemptions apply to the specific project.
- Construction activity and wages
- Building a large data center is a multi-year construction project employing hundreds to thousands of workers — electricians, ironworkers, concrete crews, HVAC technicians, fiber installers, and trades specialists. Construction wages flow into local restaurants, hotels, fuel stations, and retail.
- Permanent operations jobs
- Smaller in number than construction, but real and long-term. Hyperscale facilities typically employ 50 to 200 permanent workers in technical operations, security, facilities management, and administration. Wages are generally well above local averages for positions that don’t require a four-year degree.
- Indirect employment
- Operating a data center requires steady contracted services: landscaping, janitorial, electrical maintenance, HVAC, security, fuel delivery, and specialized vendors. These contracts frequently go to local businesses.
- Infrastructure improvements
- Major projects often require road upgrades, fiber expansion, water-line work, or electrical infrastructure. When negotiated well, these can benefit the broader community in addition to the project itself.
- Economic diversification
- Tooele County’s economy has historically leaned on mining, defense, and logistics. Data centers add a different sector with different exposure to economic cycles, strengthening overall resilience.
- Increased fiber and connectivity
- Hyperscale facilities require redundant high-capacity fiber. Expanding that infrastructure creates conditions for other technology-dependent businesses to locate in the same region.
● Benefits that depend on the specific project
Possible but not automatic
These depend on how each project is negotiated, sited, and managed.
- Local hiring
- The percentage of construction and operations jobs filled by Tooele County residents depends on contracting practices, training partnerships, and workforce capacity. Strong projects include explicit local hiring commitments.
- Workforce training investment
- Some projects fund technical training programs at local schools and community colleges, creating long-term workforce pipelines. Others don’t. The difference shows up over a decade.
- Community benefit agreements
- Some projects negotiate community benefit agreements that fund schools, parks, fire equipment, or scholarships. These are not automatic — they’re negotiated, and they’re worth asking for.
- Energy infrastructure that benefits everyone
- If a project funds new transmission lines, substations, or generation that adds capacity beyond what the data center itself needs, the broader region benefits. If the infrastructure is built only for the project, the benefits are narrower.
- Hospitality and ancillary development
- Modest. Some communities see growth in hotels, restaurants, and services to support construction crews and visiting technical staff. Effects are usually concentrated in construction phases.
- Net fiscal impact
- Whether tax revenue exceeds public costs over time depends on the size of incentives offered, the public infrastructure required, and the project’s performance against projections. A formal net fiscal impact study should accompany any major project.
- National security contribution
- For projects with federal or defense tenants — such as the Dugway / CyrusOne project — the contribution to national capabilities is real. Whether that translates into local benefits depends on the specific arrangement.
● Claims worth evaluating carefully
Common in announcements, but worth a closer look
Some benefits appear in early project announcements but require closer examination before being treated as guaranteed.
- Job-count projections
- Early announcements sometimes combine construction and permanent jobs into a single number, or apply generous indirect-job multipliers. Ask for permanent operations jobs as a separate figure, with a wage range and a timeline.
- Long-horizon revenue projections
- Tax revenue projections assume the project is built as proposed, on the timeline proposed, and at the assessed value projected. Phased projects or partial build-outs reduce revenue accordingly. Twenty- and thirty-year projections are inherently uncertain.
- “Spillover” innovation effects
- The argument that a major data center will attract surrounding technology businesses is sometimes made but rarely well-documented at the county level. Possible but not guaranteed.
- Energy resilience claims
- A facility that generates its own power may or may not contribute to regional energy resilience, depending on whether that generation is shared with the grid or dedicated solely to the facility.
- General workforce development language
- Commitments should be specific, time-bound, and enforceable. “We support local education” is not a workforce commitment. “We will fund a $500,000 technical training program at Tooele Technical College over five years” is.
Questions worth asking about any benefit claim
For any project, the most useful questions to ask are:
- What is the projected property tax contribution by year, for the first ten years and at full build-out?
- How many permanent operations jobs (excluding construction), and at what wage range?
- What percentage of construction jobs are projected to be filled locally?
- What incentives are being offered, and what is the net fiscal impact?
- What community benefits are being committed in writing?
- What infrastructure investments will benefit the broader community beyond the project itself?
A printable list of benefit-related questions is included in the Questions work asking.