Project Blue is over, but data centers aren’t done with us.
And neither is Tucson’s desperate need for the jobs and investment that the massive construction project would have provided.
When the Tucson City Council rejected the proposed mega-data-center project Wednesday afternoon, it didn’t end the possibility that more data-center developers will come knocking. There’s way too much money in data-center development, and too few such centers in the Tucson area, for other suitors, or even this same one, not to show up again.
The decision also left open the question of just how Tucson is going to lift itself from the economic malaise we’ve found ourselves in for years now. Jobs are still hard to find and rent is still high after the council’s 7-0 vote to turn down the $1.2 billion project and start setting up a regulatory framework for establishing data centers in Tucson.
They’ll need that framework sooner than later — and other jurisdictions will, too. Council Member Nikki Lee reported in her Tuesday newsletter that Beale Infrastructure, the company behind Project Blue, has alternative sites lined up in the Tucson metro, outside city limits, as alternatives.
That may be a bluff, or that may be true, but we know they and other developers have the money to push these ideas in different ways.
A landowner in Pinal County is proposing a 3,300-acre “data center corridor” south of Eloy. And the federal government has suggested turning a 330-acre site on Davis-Monthan Air Force Base into a data center. Project Blue will not be the last data-center proposal in or outside the Tucson city limits.
While not wanting water-sucking, energy-draining, and air-polluting data centers is understandable, the angry public response also carries the risk of making us look like we don’t want other new businesses here either. That’s an impression we’re going to have to fight or fix.
Citizens shout their opinions during Monday night’s public meeting about Project Blue at the Tucson Convention Center.
Perhaps part of the problem is letting unwanted ideas fester. We made people who wanted to invest a billion dollars in Tucson run a gauntlet of protesters three times before unanimously rejecting them, which is not an encouraging process for potential investors.
Mayor Regina Romero and Vice Mayor Lane Santa Cruz bashed the city staff that let the Project Blue proposal get so far.
“It seems our staff is taking cues from the Chamber of Commerce instead of from the people of Tucson or from the elected officials tasked with representing them,” Santa Cruz said in biting remarks, with City Manager Tim Thomure seated across the table a few feet away.
“I want to see city staff moving forward in alignment with the directives of this mayor and council and in deep relationship with the communities we serve,” she went on. “Economic development in Tucson must reflect our values and not override them.”
Romero echoed Santa Cruz’s comments but added: “We can’t just say no. What do we want to say yes to? What kind of jobs do we want for our residents, for our construction workers and trade workers. What is it we want and to move forward as a community to create prosperity, to make sure that our children have a choice of staying here in Tucson and thriving with us?”
These questions are the City Council’s burden now. What is it the decision makers want if it’s not this?
Perhaps the biggest recent economic-development win was American Battery Factory, a lithium iron phosphate battery plant near Tucson International Airport. It broke ground in October 2023, promising a $1 billion investment and up to 1,000 jobs, but has made slow progress so far. In May, the company asked for flexibility from Pima County in finishing construction of the plant due to tariff uncertainty and other factors.
But we haven’t landed a lot of new plants or companies, and our record is decidedly mixed even when we do. World View Enterprises, the high-altitude balloon company, and Vector Space Systems, a rocket company, didn’t take off as hoped. Tu Simple, the autonomous truck company, closed, leaving the city to try clawing back $110,000 in incentives.
We need some wins, even if data centers aren’t our thing.
As poorly as Tucson’s economy has performed lately, I don’t have a lot of faith that the elected officials will do better in guiding economic-development decisions than specialists on staff and in outside agencies have done.
Once they set out guidelines for what’s not acceptable — water-intensive businesses to start with — the best thing the Mayor and Council, along with the Pima County Board of Supervisors, could do to improve the economic well-being of the city is to govern Tucson well.
Take care of the roads and transportation, improve public safety, minimize disorder on the streets, enforce codes, keep the street lights on. If local elected officials do those things, the economic wins should come easier.
