Can a Data Center Drive Economic Growth in Delavan?

Delavan is engaged in a conversation that dozens of small and mid-sized communities across the country are quietly wrestling with right now: Should they welcome a data center? And if they do, what exactly are they getting?

It sounds like a simple question. It isn't.

Data centers carry the promise of tax revenue, jobs, and a modernized infrastructure footprint. They also bring power demands, water consumption concerns, and a particular breed of economic benefit that doesn't always look like what communities expect. Delavan's leaders are actively discussing whether this kind of project could be the catalyst their local economy needs — and getting that answer right matters more than just saying yes to a big check.

What Delavan Is Actually Weighing

Small communities rarely get to pick their economic development opportunities. Growth tends to arrive on its own terms, shaped by geography, labor markets, and increasingly, the availability of land and power. Data centers have become one of the few large-scale infrastructure investments actively seeking out non-urban locations — and that shift is creating real leverage for places like Delavan.

The communities that win in this environment are the ones that walk into negotiations understanding what they have, not just what they want.

Delavan's leaders are right to pause and think critically before committing. A data center isn't a factory. It won't employ hundreds of assembly-line workers. A hyperscale facility worth hundreds of millions of dollars in assessed value might run day-to-day with a surprisingly lean permanent staff — often somewhere between 30 and 100 full-time employees, depending on the scale of the operation. That's a fact that catches many communities off guard when they're expecting a traditional employment windfall.

But that doesn't mean the economic case is weak. It means you have to understand which levers actually move.

The Real Economic Engine: Tax Base, Not Headcount

The most powerful argument for data center development in a community like Delavan isn't job creation in the conventional sense. It's property tax revenue — and the numbers can be staggering relative to what municipalities typically see from commercial development.

A mid-sized data center campus assessed at $300–$500 million generates property tax contributions that can fundamentally reshape what a small municipality can afford to do. School district funding, road maintenance, emergency services — these are the line items that feel it first, and in a meaningful way. Some data center deals have added tens of millions of dollars annually to county tax rolls in communities that previously ran on budgets a fraction of that size.

For smaller communities, a single well-structured data center deal can accomplish in five years what conventional incremental development might take three decades to deliver.

Construction phase employment is also worth factoring in honestly. A large facility build-out can run 18–36 months and employ hundreds of skilled tradespeople — electricians, ironworkers, concrete crews, low-voltage specialists. That's not permanent employment, but it's real economic activity that circulates through local businesses, hotels, and suppliers. Communities that plan for it capture more of it.

Where the Investment Trend Is Pointing

The data center industry is in the middle of a capital deployment cycle that has few historical precedents. Driven by AI infrastructure demand, cloud expansion, and the sheer volume of data being generated globally, operators and developers are spending at a pace that would have seemed implausible five years ago. Global data center investment is expected to exceed $500 billion through 2030, and a meaningful portion of that is actively hunting for sites outside saturated primary markets like Northern Virginia, Phoenix, and Chicago.

Secondary markets — including smaller Midwest communities with available land, access to transmission infrastructure, and favorable permitting environments — have moved up the priority list for site selectors. Delavan fits a profile that is genuinely attractive to the right developer. That's not boosterism; it's where the capital is flowing.

The financial structure of these deals matters too. Many data center projects are backed by institutional capital, REITs, or hyperscale end-users like Amazon, Microsoft, or Google — entities with credit profiles and long-term commitments that give communities a level of financial certainty most economic development deals simply can't offer.

The Challenges Deserve Straight Talk

None of this means Delavan should rubber-stamp whatever proposal arrives. There are real infrastructure questions that need answers before a project makes sense.

Power is the central one. A mid-sized data center might draw 20–100 megawatts of electricity at full build-out — and that load has to come from somewhere. Does the local utility have the transmission capacity? Who pays for grid upgrades if they're needed, and on what timeline? These aren't insurmountable problems, but they're negotiations that require the community to have technical representation at the table, not just an economic development director hoping the operator handles it.

Water is the other variable. Cooling systems for large compute facilities — particularly older evaporative cooling designs — can consume millions of gallons annually. Newer liquid cooling and air-side economization technologies have significantly improved this picture, but Delavan's leaders should be asking specific questions about cooling architecture, not accepting general assurances.

Community concerns about noise, traffic during construction, and the visual footprint of large industrial structures are legitimate and worth a genuine public engagement process. The communities that handle this well tend to be the ones that bring residents into the conversation early, with real information, rather than presenting a finished deal and asking for acceptance after the fact.

What Good Looks Like From Here

Assuming the infrastructure fundamentals pencil out, the long-term case for Delavan is genuinely compelling. A well-negotiated data center agreement doesn't just add assessed value — it establishes the community as infrastructure-capable, which tends to attract follow-on development. Fiber density improves. Power reliability improves. The supplier ecosystem that grows around a major facility creates secondary business opportunities.

There's also a workforce development angle that often goes underutilized. Data center operators frequently have genuine interest in partnering with local technical colleges and vocational programs to build a pipeline for facility technicians, network engineers, and operations staff. Communities that negotiate those commitments upfront — rather than hoping they materialize — tend to see higher local hire rates and more durable employment outcomes.

The ask from Delavan's leadership shouldn't be "will you bring jobs?" — it should be "what does your community investment plan look like, and how do we hold you to it?"

The conversation happening in Delavan right now is exactly the right one to be having. The question isn't whether data centers create economic value — they demonstrably do, under the right conditions. The question is whether Delavan can structure an agreement that captures that value in ways that are durable, equitable, and aligned with what the community actually needs.

That requires specificity, technical capacity, and community engagement. It also requires elected leaders willing to negotiate rather than simply approve. If Delavan brings all three to the table, the opportunity in front of them is real.

Explore more about how data centers can impact your community.

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