Like most things in life of this sort, a data center proposed to be built on 75 acres in Salem’s Mill Creek Corporate Center is more complex than avid proponents and opponents are willing to admit.
Depending on who is speaking for or against the project, Oakline at Mill Creek would either be a boon to Salem’s economy and tax base, or a giveaway to a giant corporation that will wreak havoc on its neighborhood and the environment. (Caption under image above says Digital rendering shown for illustrative purposes only – subject to change.)
According to a Salem Reporter story by Joe Siess about the project, the city manager, Krishna Namburi, is excited about how the data center would benefit the City of Salem budget.
Namburi referred the public to the company’s website for more specific details on the project but said the company indicated the potential of 75 permanent high-paying jobs and private investment in Salem to the tune of $5.1 billion.
For context, Namburi said, the city’s current tax base is roughly $17 billion.
She said the data center could generate about $9 million annually for the city’s general fund and about $1.5 million for the city’s levy, which was accepted by voters in May 2025 to help pay for city services including the library, parks and Center 50+.
On the other hand, a link to a story about the data center on the Statesman Journal Facebook page has over a thousand comments, most of which are negative toward the data center, based on my admittedly cursory review of a sample of the comments.
Not surprising, since nationally data centers are a hot topic. New York has a one-year moratorium on new data centers. Oregon recently increased the electricity rate charged to data centers, which use a lot of power, by 30%, while slightly reducing the rate for residential customers. The Atlantic ran a story yesterday critical of the AI models that require data centers, “Generative AI Is an Engineering Disaster.”
Personally, I’m a big fan of AI. One reason is that I recently leased a 2026 Tesla Model Y Juniper after I fell in love with the car’s Full Self Driving (Supervised) abilities that are founded on AI. Yesterday I got an update for FSD 14.3.5 that included a bunch of new features. The Release Notes included this AI mention: “Rewrote the AI compiler and runtime from the ground up with MLIR, resulting in 20% faster reaction time and improving model iteration speed.”
Don’t really know what that means. I just know that I really enjoy having what amounts to an AI on wheels, because the Tesla already is a better driver than I am (with some exceptions) and will keep improving.
I don’t see the AI genie being put back in the bottle. So until AI models like Claude (my favorite) and ChatGPT are able to be developed and maintained with a much more efficient use of computer resources, data centers are going to be needed to keep up with the ever-increasing demand for AI applications.
The proposed Salem data center, Oakline at Mill Creek, sounds like it could avoid many of the problems that have beset other data centers.
Such as loud noise from backup generators, high use of water for cooling the massive amount of computer equipment, and placement on high value farmland. Oakline would be located in a corporate center zoned for this sort of business, and the parent company, Verrus, promises that its second generation data centers won’t be annoying like those first generation data centers.
Maybe. Maybe not.
We here in Salem will have to learn more before knowing whether the proposed data center will be a boon or a boondoggle. My hope is that both current proponents and opponents of the data center will heed the words of Robert Pierce, who wrote a piece in the June-July 2026 issue of Freethought Today (my wife is a subscriber) called “Reasonist is a better identifying term.”
I like what Pierce says here.
A reasonist is someone who embraces critical thinking, the scientific method and new knowledge. They are a person who maintains an open mind and is willing, and even excited, to change their opinions as new information arrives. They are people who gather information before forming an opinion, rather than filtering information to retain one.
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