Verrus's $5.1B Salem data center meets a public guillotine

A resident wheeled a guillotine on a trailer up to the Salem Public Library's Loucks Auditorium on July 27, and according to Gizmodo, that was the friendlier part of Verrus's evening. The California-based data center developer was there to pitch a $5.1 billion campus on 75 acres of state-owned property in a city of roughly 180,000 people. Its representatives left early, saying they did not feel safe. Mayor Julie Hoy attended remotely rather than in-person.

The pitch itself did more damage than the imagery. Verrus's people were unable to answer any questions about water or electricity usage, and Salem residents had only learned about the project because the city had spent more than a year under a non-disclosure agreement with the developer. Aaron Stickney, co-founder of the project's financing partner SilverSphere Capital, was jeered when he spoke in favor. Arriving with a $5.1 billion number and no answer to how much water or how much power is the sort of thing that turns a routine zoning hearing into a rout.

The council's response reads as retaliation. It voted unanimously to explore banning the NDAs the city itself had signed with Verrus, stood up a data center task force, and a follow-up meeting produced a temporary moratorium that will prevent any data center projects from moving forward for at least 120 days. The twist, per Salem Reporter and other outlets tracking the case, is that Verrus's subsidiary filed its land use application three days before the moratorium announcement, and Oregon law generally requires the city to review it under the rules in force at filing, so the freeze may bite everyone behind Verrus without touching the project that provoked it.

The honest caveat is that this is a snapshot of one very heated night. What the reporting doesn't give you is Verrus's cooling design, which utility would carry the load, or who the eventual tenants would be, which are the questions that actually determine whether the site is workable. What it does say is that the era of quietly walking hyperscale sites through under NDA is running into a real wall in mid-size American cities, and developers who show up with utility numbers and a community plan will have a much easier time than the ones who show up with lawyers.