Concerns swirl over a developer’s push for a Tooele Valley data center, but plans are on pause

Tooele County residents concerned about a developer’s proposal to build a large-scale data center near the southern shore of the Great Salt Lake turned their frustrations and demands to put a stop to the proposal on the Utah Inland Port Authority Board on Thursday. 

The group TooeleCARES delivered a letter signed by more than 1,100 Utahns from in and outside of Tooele calling on the Utah Inland Port Authority to “decline to authorize any bonds or public financing” for the Interstate Technology Park Public Infrastructure District, an entity the port authority board created earlier this year meant to finance infrastructure within the port authority’s 585-acre Tooele Valley project area located near Burmester Road and I-80. 

That project area plan lists “data centers” as one potential industry (along with light industrial, manufacturing and distribution) that could be favored for incentives, but it also says that “no businesses are guaranteed an incentive and the UIPA board may decline an application for any reason.” 

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“None of this has been presented to the public,” Amy Lawson, a Tooele resident, told the board Thursday. “We already carry more than our share of the state’s industrial burden. We are asking you not to help finance more of it sight unseen. We all live by the same dying (Great Salt) Lake, and our wells are already struggling.” 

A developer, Chuck Akerlow, has been pushing county officials behind-the-scenes to allow building a data center on the south end of that project area. That’s according to emails obtained by members of TooeleCARES through a public records request, which were shared with Utah News Dispatch this week. 

Ben Hart, executive director of the Utah Inland Port Authority, addressed Tooele County residents at the beginning of Thursday’s board meeting, telling them the port authority is taking their concerns “seriously.” 

“There’s one thing we always promise, which is we’re not going to try and slam anything through,” Hart said. “We try and be very thoughtful and take a balanced approach with public comment before we ever act.” 

However, Hart also said the port authority didn’t have anything on its agenda Thursday that had “anything to do with supporting a data center in Tooele Valley.” 

“On the contrary,” he added, “not only do we not have anything on this agenda, but it’s possible and even likely that we will never have anything on our agenda to consider for that project area.”

Tooele County and Utah Inland Port Authority officials told Utah News Dispatch on Thursday that plans to build a data center in Tooele Valley aren’t currently moving forward — and it remains to be seen whether it will go anywhere at all. 

Asked if that means the project is dead, Hart told Utah News Dispatch on Thursday that “dead is a very strong word” but “I don’t consider it alive right now, that’s for sure.” 

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A data center ordinance is in the works

Tooele County leaders have pushed pause on considering any data center applications until after the county’s planning commission and the Tooele County Council consider an ordinance regulating data center development. That ordinance isn’t expected to come before the planning commission until October and the County Council in November. 

Tooele County leaders maintain land use authority in the port authority’s Tooele Valley project area — so development there hinges on what the Tooele County Council allows, Hart told Utah News Dispatch in an interview. 

“So we know nothing can move forward right now,” Hart said. He added that it remains to be seen what the county will or won’t allow, “so it’s really hard to say that something is active or moving forward when there’s not even a pathway to move forward right now.” 

While addressing Tooele County residents during Thursday morning’s board meeting, Hart referenced a part of their letter that asks the board to “formally condition any future consideration of financing” for the Tooele Valley project area on the County Council first adopting a data center ordinance. 

“You have our 100% commitment,” Hart said. “We’re not bringing anything to our board until we get a very clear green light from any community that we’re working with.”

Hart added that the port authority will “never bring anything to our board unless we know that the community is OK with it.” 

“Very clearly,” he said, “Tooele Valley (and) Tooele County are signaling they are not OK with it. And thus, we are not OK with it. So we are not going to be moving anything forward until we know that a local community is OK with it.” 

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Earlier this year — as concern over data centers spread across the country — the Utah Inland Port Authority issued a statement explaining its position on data centers and answering frequently asked questions. That statement said the port authority is taking a “measured and transparent approach” and that “any conversation about future development must reflect Utah’s priorities: economic competitiveness, responsible growth, community health and protection of the state’s natural resources.”

“UIPA’s purpose is to strengthen Utah’s transportation network and regional economies by supporting logistics, infrastructure and manufacturing growth while protecting sensitive lands and the Great Salt Lake,” the statement says. “UIPA will not risk those resources, or the integrity of the organization, by fast-tracking data center development.”

Hart also noted that Utah lawmakers earlier this year passed a law, HB507, which bans cities and counties from providing incentives to a “large load” data center unless it’s located within a “regionally significant development zone.” That would be a separate process overseen by the Governor’s Office of Economic Development, and any tax incentives would require approval from a different board created to consider the application.

That provision of HB507 doesn’t take effect until May 2027, but Hart told Utah News Dispatch the port authority board “has already determined they want these types of projects … going through the regionally significant development zone process.”

“So regardless of what the county does, we will probably push this through the new regionally significant development zone process for any tax increment involvement,” Hart said, “which means it’s not our board that makes the final say. It would be the board that is put together under the new RSDZ law.” 

A developer’s push for a Tooele Valley data center

Akerlow, principal owner of Zenith Development, is a member of the Interstate Technology Park Public Infrastructure District that could approve infrastructure financing for the project. So is one of his Zenith Development partners, Matt Smock. 

In an email obtained by TooeleCARES that was sent a year ago, on Sept. 3, 2025, Akerlow told Rachelle Custer, Tooele County’s community development director, that “we have committed to bring a 24 (inch) high pressure natural gas line to our property and have the funding to do it.” 

“This gas line, at present, can produce 140 MegaWatts which is sufficient to launch that area as a high-tech center for more than just data storage,” Akerlow wrote. “We are under Non-Disclosure Agreements so we cannot tell you with whom we are currently dealing, but they are companies you will recognize as being prominent in the high-tech world.” 

He also wrote in that email that “additional sources of power are likely to be nuclear, and we have a Letter of Intent with a public nuclear power well funded company that would build it, operate it, own it and buy the land from us.” 

However, Akerlow also told The Salt Lake Tribune earlier this year that his project wouldn’t be possible without the incentives and financing that would be provided by the port authority. 

Emails also show Akerlow has been running into some permitting obstacles, including frustrations over a version of the data center ordinance that county officials considered but did not approve in July. 

“We can live with the difficult application process prescribed in this very long ordinance. But to protect the County you ought to have the same process for every new tenant in every building in the Park,” Akerlow wrote in a July 21 email to Tooele County officials. “And your Ordinances cannot discriminate against technology companies while happily approving manufacturers of all varieties.”

Some of Akerlow’s emails also contain an undertone that appears to threaten potential litigation against Tooele County, in some cases warning against measures county officials were considering in their data center ordinance that Akerlow said could be violations of developers’ rights to equal protection under the law. At the same time, however, Akerlow also committed to working together on the ordinance and cooperating “with you to the fullest extent.” 

In other emails, Akerlow also floated the idea of annexing into Grantsville to deal with that city’s regulations rather than Tooele County’s. Those emails caught at least one Grantsville City Council member, Derek Dalton, off guard. Dalton wrote in a social media post that he learned about the data center proposal and the developer’s interest in annexation through a public records request. 

Akerlow didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday or answer questions about the current status of the proposed data center project and if he’s still pursuing it. 

Asked if Tooele County faces any threats of a lawsuit over the project, Assistant County Manager Brittany Lopez told Utah News Dispatch on Thursday, “We have not, and that’s not something that we’re concerned about because we’re just following the process the way it needs to be.” 

“We don’t go off of pressures,” she said. “Things take time. We’ve met with the developer. We meet with the inland port. And we walk them through the timing of the process. … We need to make sure that we have a proper land use code in place so that we are having the right guardrails if a development like this were to come in.” 

Frustrations over transparency

A major driver of Tooele County residents’ frustrations stem from many of them finding out about the data center proposal from emails obtained through a public records request rather than a public process.

The TooeleCARES letter called on county and state officials to discuss the potential data center project in public, “not just behind closed doors.” The letter also called on the port authority to “suspend all informal briefings, site tours, and private coordination between UIPA staff or board members and the developer or his representatives until a public process, with real notice to Tooele Valley residents, is in place.” 

When asked about those transparency concerns, Lopez noted that Tooele County officials have “never received an application, and as far as we know, we don’t know of any developer in the county that has signed a commitment with a data center.” 

Those emails showed preliminary discussions rather than a firm proposal, Lopez said. The developer reached out to county officials with a proposal to build a data center, not the other way around. 

“These are concepts and ideas,” Lopez said. “Companies are interested in coming to communities all the time. Sometimes they come and talk to you first and they kind of tell you what they’re thinking, but that doesn’t mean that that’s what happens. It’s part of the economic development process. … There’s just not a way that you could tell the public every time.” 

However, Lopez said she and other Tooele County officials welcome any concerned residents to reach out to them and ask questions. She also said concerns raised in recent meetings with Tooele County residents have been taken into consideration while county leaders work to draft their data center ordinance. 

“We just encourage them to come in and talk to us, and we’ll be willing to set up meetings to answer any questions,” Lopez said. “I think there’s a lot of misinformation out there, and we’d just love to take the time to talk to them and really work through their concerns and hear their concerns.”

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