A data center announcement makes for a great headline. Billion-dollar investment. Hundreds of thousands of square feet. A global tech company planting a flag in your county. The promise of data centers in Kentucky sounds like the kind of economic development win every commercial real estate market is chasing right now.
But the headline doesn’t tell the whole story.
Jeff Farmer, our lead commercial advisor at Action Advisors, recently published a column in The News-Enterprise breaking down what data centers actually deliver compared to what most people assume. His core point deserves a wider audience, and frankly, I think he nailed it: bigger buildings do not always mean bigger payrolls. It is the kind of straightforward analysis that gets lost in the hype cycle, and Jeff’s willingness to put real numbers behind the argument is exactly why developers and communities trust his perspective.
The Math Most People Skip
Jeff’s analysis compared employment density across facility types using real numbers from the I-65 corridor in Hardin County. The comparison is stark:
- Manufacturing facilities typically employ one person per 425 to 800 square feet of building space.
- Data centers average roughly one employee per 5,000 square feet — six to twelve times fewer permanent jobs for the same footprint.
Take the Ford Energy battery plant in Glendale as a reference point. That facility spans roughly 4 million square feet and employs around 2,500 people. A data center of equivalent size would generate approximately 800 permanent positions. Same acreage consumed. Same infrastructure demands. A fraction of the ongoing employment.
None of this means data centers are bad investments. They bring significant capital expenditure, property tax revenue, and can serve as anchors for broader technology ecosystems. But the economic profile is fundamentally different from what most communities are used to evaluating.
What We’re Hearing on the Ground
Working the I-65 corridor between Louisville and Bowling Green every day, our team — Jeff Farmer, Rebecca Carter, and I — sees the data center conversation from the broker’s side of the table. We’ve communicated directly with large-scale data center developers seeking 300-plus acres in Kentucky. The interest is real, and the capital behind it is substantial.
But we’re also talking to county judges, planning commissions, and landowners who hear “data center” and picture the next Toyota plant. That gap between expectation and reality is where communities can get into trouble — not because the investment is bad, but because the questions being asked don’t match the actual product being delivered.
The Right Questions
Jeff’s column outlined several questions that every community should ask before approving a data center development. I have watched Jeff walk clients and community leaders through this framework, and it consistently reframes the conversation in a productive direction. These questions apply just as well to investors evaluating land plays adjacent to proposed sites:
- How many permanent, full-time jobs will this create? Not construction jobs. Not indirect estimates. Permanent headcount on day one of operations.
- What is the average wage for those positions? Data center technician roles pay well, but there are far fewer of them than a manufacturing equivalent would produce.
- What utility infrastructure upgrades are required, and who pays? Data centers consume enormous amounts of power and water. If the county or utility ratepayers are subsidizing that buildout, the return calculation changes.
- What is the incentive cost per permanent job? When you divide the total incentive package by the actual permanent job count, how does the number compare to a manufacturing or logistics recruitment?
- What happens when the technology becomes obsolete? Server hardware cycles are measured in years, not decades. What is the commitment to long-term operation versus a build-and-depreciate model?
Where This Intersects With Commercial Real Estate
For brokers and investors working the Kentucky market, the data center wave creates both opportunity and risk.
The opportunity is in land. Large-acreage parcels with access to power, water, and fiber along the Interstate 65 corridor are suddenly in demand from a buyer pool that didn’t exist five years ago. That’s good for landowners and for anyone who can source and assemble the right sites.
The risk is in overvaluing adjacency. A 10-acre parcel next to a proposed data center site isn’t automatically worth what a parcel next to an Amazon fulfillment center would be — because the employment and traffic patterns are completely different. Fewer employees means less demand for nearby retail, housing, and services.
Jeff’s framing here is spot-on: data centers are best understood as utility-scale infrastructure investments, not conventional economic development projects. Once you accept that distinction, a lot of the confusion around these projects clears up. When you frame them that way, the land strategy and the community strategy both come into sharper focus.
The I-65 Corridor Opportunity
Hardin County and the broader I-65 corridor between Louisville and Bowling Green remain one of the most dynamic commercial real estate markets in Kentucky. Between the Ford Energy plant in Glendale, the Kentucky Transpark in Bowling Green, and steady logistics expansion in the Shepherdsville corridor, the fundamentals for industrial and commercial land for sale are strong independent of any single data center announcement.
The team at Action Advisors — Jeff Farmer, Rebecca Carter, and I — works this corridor daily across every commercial property type: land, retail, industrial, mixed-use, and special purpose. If you’re evaluating a site, exploring a development play, or just trying to understand what’s actually happening in this market, we’re a good call to make.
Jeff Farmer’s column “Data Centers: Opportunity But Ask Responsible Questions” was published in The News-Enterprise on June 20, 2026.
Grayson Bryan is a commercial and residential agent with Action Advisors, LLC and eXp Realty in Elizabethtown, Kentucky.
Related reading: Data Centers: More Than Just Real Estate | Why CRE Investors Are Leaning Into Risk in 2026
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