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by thewebguyd2 hours ago |
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upvoteby nixgeek2 hours ago|
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It’s unusual to buy the land and take a gamble on its utility, at least whenever datacenter construction is involved. Purchasing parties are risk averse to this exact scenario and work hard to craft contracts that reduce risk.

Often the choices are —

1. Buy land at $/acre that reflects very little premium, based on a short feasibility study, but without any ultimate contingency that permitting will occur. This is your example. But problematically all permitting applications are typically public record, so when you fail, the land can’t be sold on to someone else as if that didn’t happen, any sophisticated buyer will know the exact issues the city/county had with your usage. Land often transacts onward at firesale prices under these circumstances.

2. $/acre for land is bid upon at a substantial premium reflecting the future value as a datacenter, it remains under contract for potentially years pending outcome of approvals, then it transacts. Permitting being denied usually results in either no money changing hands or a small termination fee reflecting the carrying cost of the land during that period. If permitting works out the seller of land walks away very happy as the $/acre was extremely lucrative.

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upvoteby edmundsauto1 hours ago|
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The second option also incentivizes the seller, who is often a local real estate magnate, to pressure local officials to issue the permits.
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upvoteby dnnddidiej37 minutes ago|
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2 seems good as the seller can still make money from the land in the meantime. It does make it unsellable to anyone else in that time though.
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upvoteby cbdevidal2 hours ago|
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Fun fact: Large businesses are often tapped to write the laws intended to target large businesses. The process is called “model legislation.” Fox and henhouse.
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upvoteby hylaride1 hours ago|
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It's also called "regulatory capture" and it's been around in some form (implicitly or explicitly) since there's been laws in existence.
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upvoteby toss12 hours ago|
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Well, businesses — and all parties — who will be affected by legislation should be able to provide input. Otherwise we too often get clueless legislation that is massively mocked and rightly bemoaned on this site — because the legislators have no real clue of the technical issues involved.

Of course, the businesses should be only one part of the expertise that goes into writing the laws; other experts MUST be involved, or it will indeed be a fox and henhouse situation where the fox designs the legal locks so they can always be opened by foxes...

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upvoteby parineum2 hours ago|
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That's not what model legislation is.

That can be an example of model legislation but, broadly, model legislation is created by an organization for use as an example for multiple different legislatures (usually states). Everyone from think tanks, busineses, the EFF, the ACLU and PETA draft model legislation.

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