Have you ever had a new neighbor knock on your door before they moved in? Maybe they brought cookies, introduced themselves and asked about the block – who handles the snow removal, where the kids play, what the neighborhood actually needs. That neighbor usually becomes the one people call when they need help, the one who gets invited to backyard barbecues, the one nobody complains about when they renovate their house.

Then there is the neighbor who shows up unannounced with a moving truck at dawn. Their house is well-built, their intentions are good and they have every right to be there. But the first conversation doesn't happen until people get suspicious, and by then the neighborhood has already decided who they are.

After decades working through data center development across this country, I must tell you, our industry has been the second neighbor far more often than the first. That’s not just a reputation problem. It’s a business problem – and it’s one we’re creating for ourselves.

The demand isn't slowing down. The opposition is getting organized

The AI buildout is unlike anything this industry has seen. Every major tech company is racing to build the infrastructure that AI runs on, which means data centers at a scale and geographic spread that would have been hard to imagine five years ago. Developers moved fast to meet that demand.

Community engagement did not move with them, and that gap is now showing up as real costs:

• Delayed permits
• Canceled projects
• Organized opposition in markets across the country

This is not a communications problem. It’s a sequencing problem. The industry got good at moving fast on land, power and capital. It did not get good at communicating fast to the people who live next to where all of that is being developed.

Communities aren't anti-technology. They're reacting to being ignored

When a data center shows up at the edge of a town without warning or conversation, it arrives carrying every fear that AI has already planted in people’s minds. Questions about power draw, water use, noise and traffic are real and deserve honest answers. But the deeper problem is that these communities are being asked to accept major infrastructure without anyone explaining what they get in return.

The pushback isn't irrational. It's what happens when you skip the conversation. And the conversation is worth having, because the facts are on your side – if you get to them first.

On water, the concern I hear most often: A 500-megawatt facility with a modern cooling system uses roughly 40,000 gallons per day. According to JLL Research, a 300-home subdivision uses 10 times what the data center does.

US golf courses use over four times more water daily than all data centers combined. When no one explains that upfront, fear fills the gap. When you explain it before anyone has to ask, it lands entirely differently.

On jobs: a major development site can employ 4,000 construction workers – electricians, plumbers, ironworkers, pipefitters – at wages that, in the busiest markets, have roughly doubled over the past four years. In Texas right now, workers are driving in from other states because local supply can't meet demand.

On tax revenue: year after year, these facilities fund schools, roads and fire departments at a scale most small municipalities have never seen. Six years ago, I sat down with a mayor in a small Texas town and told him his community was about to see the biggest economic boost it had experienced in decades. He did not believe me. Today, that town’s tax revenue has nearly doubled.

The distance between what people fear and what happens is wide. Closing it should be easy. The reason it hasn’t closed is because the story keeps getting told too late.

The strongest case for your project comes from people who aren't selling it

The best arguments for data centers don’t come from developers. They come from the people who live next to operating facilities.

A fire chief in a small Virginia town will tell you that three years ago his department had two ambulances and couldn’t afford to replace them. Because of data center tax revenue, his department now has five new vehicles, upgraded equipment and three additional full-time paramedics. Response time to accidents on the county highway dropped by seven minutes.

The story communities need to hear is the one told by people who were once exactly where they are now – uncertain, cautious and waiting for proof. Make it easy for them to tell it. The most powerful thing you can do is get out of the way and let the evidence speak.

When to start: Earlier than you think and earlier than the law requires

Every project I’ve watched move through approvals smoothly did one thing the same way: community engagement was built into the timeline from the start – not as a checkbox before the public hearing, but as a genuine relationship started before there was news to announce.

What good looks like in practice

Being a good neighbor isn’t a campaign. It’s a set of habits. Here’s what it looks like concretely:

• Show up before you need anything. Identify the mayor, the county commissioner, the school board chair and the local fire chief before you file a single document. Have a conversation with no agenda other than to listen.
• Answer the hard questions with real numbers, unprompted. Don't wait for someone to ask about water use or noise. Lead with it. Bring the comparison data. Put it in plain language.
• Make the commitment visible and specific. Vague promises about community investment are worse than no promises at all, because they create expectations you haven't defined. If you're funding something – a road improvement, a fire vehicle, a scholarship program – say exactly what, when and how it will be tracked.
• The ask. The communities pushing back on data centers are not against technology or progress. They are reacting the way anyone reacts when something significant moves in next door without saying hello – with doubt that builds fast and gets harder to undo the longer it sits.

This industry has the facts, the jobs and the tax revenue on its side. It has consistently failed to deploy those facts early enough to matter.

Getting approval to build is not just a permit. It’s a relationship. And this is the part the industry keeps forgetting: relationships don’t start when you need something. They start long before that – or they don't start at all.

The communities you haven't talked to yet are already forming an opinion about you. The question is whether you're in the room when it happens.

Ready to build community relationships into your next project from day one? Talk to our data center team at JLL.