The AI boom is no longer just producing more servers.
It is producing more buildings, more land purchases and more fights over where those buildings can go.
The Washington Post’s satellite analysis published September 28 shows data centers spreading across farmland, forest and desert in multiple states.
Among 93 large data centers examined by the Post, only 40% were built on previously developed land.
Another 33% were built on farmland.
Twelve percent replaced forest and another 11% replaced shrubland.
And the facilities are getting enormous.
xAI’s Colossus 2 in Memphis is now the largest operating data center in the country. Meta’s planned Hyperion campus in rural Louisiana is already larger than Manhattan’s Central Park. The Post says that if currently planned facilities are completed, Hyperion would rank only fifth-largest in the country by square footage by 2030.
The companies are also moving farther into rural areas because the newest AI facilities require vastly more electricity than older data centers.
That creates a second problem.
Some facilities are bringing their own power generation.
xAI has built Colossus 2 next to an existing gas plant and bought additional land in Mississippi for new gas turbines to supply its computing operation.
Then came the Pennsylvania story.
NorthPoint Development wants to put the first of 15 planned data-center buildings on 1,300 acres in the Pocono foothills near Hazle Township.
The company sent letters to the town’s 4,500 households offering each one $10,000 if the project is approved.
That’s $45 million in direct payments to residents.
NorthPoint is separately offering up to another $120 million over 15 years for police, schools and other community spending.
The offer came after residents asked a very direct question at a public meeting:
What do we get if you build this here?
NorthPoint’s answer was cash.
It hasn’t ended the opposition.
Hazle Township previously rejected the project over zoning. NorthPoint sued. The township has also imposed a temporary moratorium while it works on its zoning rules. Residents interviewed by the Wall Street Journal raised concerns about noise, home values, electricity, water and whether the $10,000 offer amounts to an attempt to buy their support.
So the data-center expansion has reached a strange point.
The facilities are getting larger.
They are moving onto farmland and other undeveloped land.
They need their own power infrastructure.
And developers are now offering thousands of residents cash to accept them.
Then another story landed in the same weekend’s news.
Major League Baseball approached the federal government about holding a game at a national park.
Grand Teton National Park became one of the locations under consideration.
The Washington Post reported that a National Park Service official visited the park and looked at three possible locations for a baseball park. The White House later disputed the characterization that the administration was actively scouting sites, saying MLB had asked whether a national-park game was possible and that no permit had been issued.
That distinction matters.
There is no approved Grand Teton baseball stadium.
But the request itself is real.
MLB wants to know whether it can put a new baseball facility inside one of the country’s most protected federal landscapes. The 2027 schedule is already set, meaning a new specialty game would not happen before 2028.
Grand Teton is therefore not part of the data-center boom.
It shows something else happening at the same time: proposals for new facilities are reaching land that previously would have been treated as unavailable for this kind of construction.
Look at the three developments together.
The Post finds that 60% of the large data centers it examined were built somewhere other than previously developed land.
NorthPoint wants 1,300 acres in Pennsylvania and is offering $45 million directly to 4,500 households to get the first building approved.
And MLB is asking whether a baseball park can be put inside Grand Teton National Park, with three possible sites reportedly examined even though the White House says there is no administration-directed stadium project.
The scale of the data-center buildout explains why these arguments are multiplying.
The Post counted nearly 100 hyperscale data centers already operating, about 120 under construction and another 460 planned. These facilities consume at least 100 megawatts at peak operation.
That means the fight is no longer just over what happens inside a data center.
It is over the acres underneath it.
A forest that was there five years ago.
A farm that was there before the construction crews arrived.
A rural neighborhood that suddenly has 15 proposed data-center buildings next door.
And, in a completely different case, a national park that somebody now wants to use for a professional baseball game.
The $10,000 checks in Pennsylvania are the clearest sign of how far the argument has moved.
A developer is no longer simply saying that a new facility will bring jobs and tax revenue.
It is asking 4,500 households to take the money and accept the building.
At the same time, satellite images are showing how much land the AI buildout is actually consuming.
And Grand Teton shows that the question of what Americans are willing to build, and where, is reaching places that normally would not be part of the conversation.
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