WEST JORDAN, Utah — As Utah prepares for additional data center projects, questions remain about how those facilities affect nearby neighborhoods.
To better understand those impacts, FOX 13 News visited a West Jordan neighborhood near the Novva data center, where residents have lived alongside the facility for several years.
Lairn Finlayson has lived in the neighborhood for about a decade. He said the area has changed significantly over the years. Before the data center was built, Finlayson said the land nearby was open space where residents could occasionally see wildlife.
“We used to watch the antelope out in the field and deer once in a while,” Finlayson said.
Today, that field is home to the Novva data center, located several hundred feet from his home.
Despite the change, Finlayson said the facility itself has not been a major concern.
“It doesn't bother. I'm retired, so it doesn't bother me that bad,” Finlayson said.
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Finlayson said other development has had a more noticeable effect on the neighborhood. He pointed to a nearby apartment complex under construction west of the area.
“I went to Bingham High School up in Copperton and used to be able to look out my front door and see the B on the hill and remind me of the old days. But, can't see that anymore. You see apartments,” Finlayson said.
Another resident, Mohsin, lives across the road from the data center’s entrance. He invited FOX 13 News into his backyard to demonstrate what he described as minimal noise coming from the facility.
“Once in a while you hear this sound," Mohsin said.
He said neither the noise nor the workers commuting to the site have created problems for his family.
“There are a lot of people working. But they don't bother you. They don't honk, they mind their own business. They go in, in and out,” Mohsin said.
Not all residents shared that view.
Two people living on the same street, roughly a football field away from the data center, said they were bothered by noise. However, both declined requests to speak on camera.
FOX 13 News requested records from the West Jordan Police Department for noise complaints in the surrounding area during the past year.
The search returned three police reports: one involving loud music and two involving a rooster. None were related to the data center.
Ryan Stock, who also lives nearby, said he has not experienced any issues.
“They're great neighbors. We've never had any problems. No noise,” Stock said.
FOX 13 News also asked West Jordan officials how they balance growth with quality of life concerns.
Paul Jerome, the city's assistant administrator, said the city has not received complaints about the Novva data center but takes resident concerns seriously.
“Our mission as a city is the health, welfare, and safety of our residents. Tax revenue is great. We also want to make sure that the residents who live here enjoy living here,” Jerome said.
He was not surprised tp learn that many residents interviewed spoke positively about the facility.
“The data center itself actually was the one that did a lot of the outreach for the residents, you know, communicating what they were going to be doing, what it was going to look like, as well as continued outreach to this day,” Jerome said.
He added that data centers contribute to the city's tax base.
“If businesses weren't offsetting some of that tax base, that gets put put onto the residents' backs to have the same kind of services. So they do they do a lot for a city from a tax base perspective,” Jerome said.
The Novva data center occupies about 100 acres. While considerably smaller than the proposed Stratos project in Box Elder County, which is planned for a 20,000-acre site, it is similar in scale to the proposed Volition data center in Spanish Fork, which is planned to occupy about 1 million square feet.
As those and other projects move through the planning process, residents in affected communities continue asking many of the same questions West Jordan residents faced years ago.
Stock recalled meeting a man from Eagle Mountain who stopped by the neighborhood to ask about living near a data center.
“We were all just hanging out, and a guy stopped by, and he said he was from Eagle Mountain, and he had concerns about the data center being built by him. And so we were able to tell him the same thing. Just they're good neighbors. We haven't had any problems with them at all. Quiet, not nothing. Yeah. So. We thought that was interesting that he would stop, take his time to drive around and ask questions to other people,” Stock said.
For some longtime residents, the conversation is about more than data centers.
Growth continues across Utah, changing communities that have looked the same for decades.
“It was just this little neighborhood with a couple houses in it,” Stock said.
Finlayson said the changes can be difficult to watch, but he sees them as part of life.
“You get old, you get sad because when you see all this construction going on, but that's life,” Finlayson said.
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