Key Takeaways
- 1 Land is <1% of project cost—developers optimize for risk and timeline, not price
- 2 Brownfield barriers: contamination liability, 2-4 year remediation delays
- 3 Transmission proximity is the #1 factor—corridors run through farmland
The Farmland Paradox
Meta, Google, Microsoft, Amazon—they all choose cornfields over closed factories. Why pay to demolish farms when contaminated industrial sites are cheaper with government support?
Former Industrial
Lower price, government incentives, but...
Agricultural Land
Clean title, predictable timeline
Land Cost: The Irrelevant Factor
Why Brownfield Fails
Three compounding problems make former industrial sites unattractive despite lower prices.
The Real Deciding Factor: Grid Access
Land cost is irrelevant. Contamination risk matters. But transmission proximity dominates all other factors.
Transmission corridors bypass cities
High-voltage lines connect power plants to load centers—running through rural farmland, not urban brownfields.
Why Incentives Don't Work
When land is <1% of cost, financial incentives cannot overcome structural disadvantages. The market systematically produces outcomes policy tries to prevent.
Go Deeper
Chapter 7 of This Is Server Country explores the Saline Township case study in detail—how site selection decisions ripple through communities, why traditional industrial recruitment fails, and what alternative policy frameworks might better align market incentives with public goals.
Learn more about the book →