Junior Data Center Shift Engineer

Clarksville, Ark., approves up to $55 billion in bonds for Serverfarm's $6.6 billion data center. The Clarksville City Council approved industrial revenue bonds backing Serverfarm's $6.6 billion data center campus, capping a financing process that drew community pushback over transparency. The Clarksville, Ark., City Council voted Thursday, July 30, 2026, to approve up to $55 billion in industrial revenue bonds backing a $6.6 billion data center campus that California-based Serverfarm is building in the Arkansas River Valley, clearing the last major financing hurdle for one of the largest private investments in state history. The council approved two resolutions: one authorizing up to $5 billion in taxable industrial development revenue bonds for an entity called SF ARK1, and a second authorizing up to $50 billion in taxable bonds for an affiliated entity, Hatchbo. City officials have said the bond authorizations do not create financial obligations for Clarksville or its taxpayers. Under Arkansas's Act 9 industrial development program, the city holds title to the project while the bonds are outstanding and leases the facility back to the project company, with lease payments structured to equal the bonds' debt service. The vote follows a delay: the council tabled four related resolutions on July 13 after aldermen said they needed more information, holding a work session on July 20 before returning to approve the financing package on July 30. According to Serverfarm's own project materials, the Clarksville campus will span roughly 135 acres and include multiple 300,000-square-foot buildings across two floors each, with 72 megawatts of power capacity per building. The company says the facilities will use an air-cooled chiller system with a power usage effectiveness rating of 1.3 or lower, and a closed-loop water system it says consumes about 70% less water than traditional data center cooling. The first two buildings are targeted for completion in January 2028. Serverfarm projects the project will generate approximately $558 million in public local benefits through 2060, including $548 million in payments in lieu of taxes, $3 million in upfront city and county agreement fees, and $840,000 in construction permit fees. The company has also proposed funding a $6 million community development center. Serverfarm says the campus will pay for electrical upgrades across the Clarksville Connected Utilities service area without raising rates for existing residential customers, addressing capacity constraints the company says have limited regional economic development. On employment, Serverfarm says the construction phase will draw thousands of workers from regional contractors and skilled trades, while permanent operations are expected to support 150 to 400 indirect regional jobs in maintenance, electrical work, HVAC and specialty contracting. The company says it plans workforce partnerships with Arkansas Tech University and the University of the Ozarks to build career pathways in data center operations, cybersecurity and industrial controls. The project has drawn a mixed reaction locally. According to Route Fifty, roughly 100 residents attended a town hall on the project, submitting more than 80 questions in advance, with some residents citing frustration over limited advance notice and unclear details on the benefits package before tree-clearing work began in January. Resident Bryan Connerly was quoted saying, "I don't think I'm the only one that believes big corporations don't always keep their promises." Serverfarm responded that "we understand a project of this size generates questions, and we welcome these conversations." The Clarksville campus is one of six data center projects that have been announced across Arkansas, part of a broader wave of hyperscale and colocation data center investment reshaping construction pipelines nationally. RealtyWire has separately covered other major data center financings and developments, including Equinix's $3 billion bond sale to fund data center growth and Meta and BlackRock's $14 billion joint venture for an El Paso, Texas, campus. What it means: The bond structure is a financing mechanism, not a direct city expenditure - the debt is backed by lease payments from the project company, not general tax revenue, and Clarksville officials say the city bears no liability if the project were to default. The scale of the authorization, at up to $55 billion, reflects the capital intensity of hyperscale data center construction rather than the ultimate project cost, which Serverfarm has pegged at $6.6 billion. What remains to be seen is how the promised $558 million in local benefits materializes over the project's multi-decade timeline, and whether the permanent job counts match the company's projections once the facility is operational in 2028.

Clarksville City Council to consider tax break for a $6.6B data center. 7 hours, 57 minutes ago Clarksville to weigh tax break for center The Clarksville City Council is scheduled to hold a special meeting Thursday night to take up bond issues and a tax abatement agreement related to the construction of a $6.6 billion data center on city grounds. The meeting is 5 p.m. at Clarksville City Hall, 205 Walnut St. Serverfarm, a California-based data center developer, is building the data center on a 135-acre site just north of Interstate 40, near the Johnson Regional Medical Center. According to the Serverfarm website, the data center is expected to generate about $558 million in public local benefits through 2060. This includes $548 million in payments in lieu of taxes. The company is also proposing the construction of a $6 million community development center. The council will also consider a community development grant agreement for the data center. Construction of the data center at Clarksville is in progress. Google has started construction on a hyperscale data center in West Memphis with a completion target of 2028 or 2029. - Sydney Sasser Glitch causes stall in American flights WASHINGTON - A brief nationwide halt to departures over a technical glitch stalled American Airlines and its regional carriers Tuesday night. The Federal Aviation Administration issued a ground stop for American Airlines flights that took effect around 5:30 p.m. and was canceled 6:18 p.m. because of a computer problem. The issue delayed hundreds of flights because planes could not depart until it was resolved, and it came as many U.S. East Coast airports were experiencing significant delays and ground stops because of thunderstorms. "Systems are coming back online now and flights are departing again," American said in a statement. "We put a temporary ground stop in place while our teams worked to resolve the issue. We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience." FlightAware, a flight-tracking site, said American had delayed 1,100 flights, or 30%, on Tuesday and canceled 221, or 6% of flights. Flightradar24, another aviation website, said as of 6 p.m. there were 130 fewer flights in the air than at the same time last week. State index up 4.81, closes at 1,195.86 The Arkansas Index, a price-weighted index that tracks the largest public companies based in the state, closed Wednesday at 1,195.86, up 4.81 points. "Equities initially rallied following the Federal Reserve decision to leave interest rates unchanged following their July meeting but stocks subsequently closed lower on concerns over what actions were needed by the Fed to calm inflation," said Leon Lants, managing director at Stephens Inc. The index was developed by Bloomberg News and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette with a base value of 100 as of Dec. 30, 1997.

Mixed opinions, limited information about $6.6 billion data center in Arkansas River Valley. Karen Fawley first recalls learning of plans to construct a data center near the Johnson Regional Medical Center when a friend mentioned the project in passing two years ago. Fawley said she wasn't following the project closely. Then, in January, she watched the razing of a tree-covered hillside through her mother's hospital room window. "It was really a surprise," Fawley said. "We knew that it was gonna happen, or we at least thought it was gonna happen, but we didn't know when. And then I just looked out the window and it was just, it was happening." That hillside next to the hospital now has a tall crane that dwarfs the surrounding area and the beginnings of what will eventually become a data center. The groundwork for the project was laid quietly in 2022, and with the support of local officials - and an initial lack of public pushback - it has progressed steadily through various zoning and city council approvals without much controversy. The $6.6 billion data center - one of six such projects announced in Arkansas - is being built by Serverfarm, a California-based company with facilities around the world. Unlike Little Rock and Pulaski County where residents have been vocally opposed to two planned data centers, opposition appears more muted in Clarksville, and some have expressed optimism online about the benefits the Serverfarm facility could bring. But there is also skepticism and frustration from those who say they were blindsided by the project - a common refrain at a time when many small towns across the country are grappling with data centers springing up in their backyards. Some Clarksville residents hope the center leads to good jobs and more money for schools, roads and law enforcement. Others have questions about environmental impact, utility costs and whether the city is giving away too much to receive too little. The desire for more information was evident during a community-organized town hall at the University of the Ozarks last Monday. The event occurred immediately after the Clarksville City Council meeting where members tabled resolutions to issue up to $55 billion in industrial development revenue bonds for the Serverfarm data center. About a hundred people attended the sometimes tense town hall. Community members submitted more than 80 questions in advance, said Debra Hobbs, one of the event organizers. Hobbs is also a former Republican state legislator who is running as an independent candidate against Republican Rep. Aaron Pilkington to represent House District 45, which includes Clarksville. Town hall organizers invited Clarksville's mayor, city council, city engineer and other local officials, including Pilkington, but only two of six city council members attended. Pilkington told the Advocate he was out of the country, and Clarksville Mayor David Rieder held his own meeting at the same time as the town hall. Rieder did not respond to several interview requests. In an emailed statement, Serverfarm spokesperson Kurt Widmann said the company is continuing to provide information to city leaders, and looks forward to sharing details of the project's benefits, including hundreds of permanent jobs and millions in tax revenue, with local residents. Like other Arkansas data centers, Serverfarm has created a website for the project. "We understand a project of this size generates questions, and we welcome these conversations," Widmann wrote. "Our goal is to build a campus that benefits Clarksville and its residents while complying with all applicable environmental requirements." Economic potential. Clarksville, a town of just under 10,000 in the Arkansas River Valley, is the kind of town that packs the stands for a peewee baseball game and hangs vibrant blue banners that read "Welcome Home" from lightpoles along downtown's main street. Nestled in between the Boston and Ouachita Mountains, it's the home of the Johnson County Peach Festival, the University of the Ozarks and a Tyson Foods hatchery. Though the hatchery has been economically beneficial, the closures of Baldor Electric and HanesBrands manufacturing facilities were a big hit to the region, Pilkington said. "Those were two big economic losses, and so while we've had some growth as well, we're teetering on the edge," he said. Pilkington, founder of a new group advocating for data center and AI infrastructure investment, said the region needs the jobs and tax revenue he says the completed data center will provide. The Republican lawmaker has been a proponent for expanded financial incentives for data centers, and sponsored legislation in 2023 that established sales tax exemptions for such projects. Eddie King, one of two city council members who attended last week's city hall, said young people are moving away from Clarksville because of a lack of good jobs. King said the town wouldn't have a main street if it weren't for Tyson. "We got plenty of convenience stores and Mexican restaurants and other kind of restaurants, but we don't have jobs that people can go out and make a retirement on, other than Tyson and Red Wing," King said. Many questions, few answers. The project's benefits remain an open question, in part because a "community benefits package" scheduled to be discussed at last week's city council meeting was pulled from the agenda. "A lot of it sounds like we got a lot of promises, but I don't think I'm the only one that believes big corporations don't always keep their promises," Clarksville resident Bryan Connerly told the Advocate. King and Christel Thompson, the two council members who attended the town hall, said they were unable to answer many of the questions submitted by the community. "I was hoping that the mayor and some of these other folks who had the answers would be here tonight," Thompson said. Despite the current lack of details, Thompson, a former public school teacher and principal, said she's hopeful the data center will benefit local public schools. Thompson said a visit to an operational data center in Oklahoma demonstrated how tax revenue supported construction of a facility focused on STEM - science, technology, engineering and math - that benefitted students. "They were able to partner with universities near there to train those students to go get jobs...because of the property tax they were able to get," Thompson said. A town engaged. Efforts to organize people to push back against the data center have run into cynicism, Hobbs said, and what some described as lagging civic engagement with local government. She said "people feel powerless," but the data center project "is challenging people to show up." Thompson said the city had not done a good job of "getting out in front of this" and informing the community of what was coming. Pilkington disagreed. "If people feel like they're kept in the dark, I don't necessarily know what they wanted us to do unless they want us to be running TV ads about what the project does," he said. No one group was at fault for the community being taken off guard by the data center, Fawley said. The city could have done more to alert residents, Serverfarm could have been better about conducting outreach, and residents could have been more proactive about learning what was happening in local government, she said. Fawley said it felt like nothing could be done once construction began, but the town hall was a wake-up call. "I just came away from it saying I need to know more about what's going on," she said. "That's part of the reason why my husband and I have been really trying to get more involved in things, because it's just what you should do." Arkansas Advocate is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. This article was published with permission from the Arkansas Advocate. Contact Editor Andrew DeMillo for questions: [email protected]. Follow Arkansas Advocate on Facebook and Twitter.