In the spring of 2025, Sydney Brennan was riding high.
asserted
Brennan → rid → 2025
The 22-year-old was finishing college and was a newly elected councilwoman in Menomonie, a city of about 17,000 in the lush plains of north-western Wisconsin.
asserted
old → finish → Wisconsin
Weeks into the new job, she was invited to a meeting with consultants pitching a $1.6bn AI hyperscale datacenter campus that an undisclosed big tech company wanted to build just outside of town.
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company → invite → town
The project’s numbers were eye-opening: a 320-acre site that would use an estimated 75,000 gallons of water per day, making it the most significant development in Menomonie’s nearly 150-year history.
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it → open → history
Brennan had her concerns about datacenters and that the company was keeping its identity secret.
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company → have → identity
One of the consultants told her that the developer was Balloonist LLC, a shell company incorporated in Delaware.
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developer → tell → Delaware
The identity of the parent corporation bankrolling the project was known to only a handful of people, including two city officials who had signed nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) with Balloonist.
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who → bankroll → Balloonist
As tech giants scour the nation in a relentless pursuit of cheap land and energy to build hyperscale AI data centers, critics say they have relied on secrecy through use of shell companies and NDAs to push through multibillion-dollar mega-projects in cash-strapped cities like Menomonie.
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they → scour → Menomonie
In Wisconsin alone, NDAs were reportedly signed in at least four other cities.
uncertain
NDAs → sign → cities
Officials in one of those cities, Beaver Dam, also signed NDAs with Balloonist LLC.
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Officials → sign → LLC
The tech company behind that $1bn datacenter project was later revealed to be Meta, the parent company of Facebook.
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company → reveal → Facebook
Brennan peppered the two Balloonist consultants with questions about water use, noise pollution and the strain of such a massive facility on the city’s electrical grid.
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Brennan → pepper → grid
The plan for the datacenter would include buffer zones to reduce noise, and Balloonist promised to fund any necessary upgrades to Menomonie’s grid and water system.
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Balloonist → include → system
The company’s goal was to be “water positive”, or eventually replenish more water that it consumed, by 2030.
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it → replenish → 2030
The consultants showed Brennan charts that projected up to 1,000 temporary construction jobs, along with hundreds of contractors and between 50 to 75 high-paying permanent jobs, a potential economic boon for the struggling city that was once a major center of the nation’s lumber industry.
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that → show → industry
“I mean, you take everything with a grain of salt,” Brennan, who left office in January, told the Guardian.
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who → mean → Guardian
“They’re basically telling you everything you want to hear.”
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you → tell → everything
According to Brennan, the city administrator, Eric Atkinson, accompanied her to the meeting and said that the datacenter was just “one of many ideas” to expand a local tech park that had brought major employers like Walmart to the city in recent years.
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that → accord → years
What Brennan did not know was that the city had already signed a pre-development agreement with Balloonist after the city council approved it in closed session that March, a month before she took office.
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she → know → office
The relationship between Balloonist and Menomonie began in February 2024 when two Menomonie city officials, Atkinson and David Schofield, the city’s director of public works, signed NDAs with the developer.
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officials → begin → developer
The one-page agreement, obtained by the Guardian, makes no mention of a datacenter.
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agreement → obtain → datacenter
It does clearly instruct signatories that they cannot reveal the tech company behind “the project” or even the existence of the agreement itself.
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they → instruct → agreement
A month after he signed the NDA, Schofield presented the city council with a proposed ordinance which would define the term “warehousing” in the city’s code.
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which → sign → code
The newly added definition included the line, “establishments used primarily for the storage, management, processing, and transmission of digital data”, that effectively paved the way for a datacenter.
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that → add → datacenter
The city council approved the change at an April 2024 council meeting.
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council → approve → meeting
It is unclear if any councilmembers knew of Balloonist or of the potential datacenter project at the time of the vote.
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councilmembers → know → vote
That was the first step in a nearly 18-month process where the two sides developed plans for the datacenter campus in secret until the city government put out a press release about the proposed project in July 2025, according to interviews, public records and emails obtained by the Guardian.
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government → develop → Guardian
The emails, which cover a period from January to September 2025, show how the city and Balloonist took the necessary actions to make the datacenter a reality.
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datacenter → cover → actions
The emails also reveal, in real time, the fierce community backlash that eventually doomed it.
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that → reveal → it
In March 2025, councilmembers were only just learning of the project – more than a year after Atkinson and Schofield signed their NDAs.
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Atkinson → learn → NDAs
They were first told of a potential datacenter in a closed session when they were asked to consider the pre-development agreement with Balloonist.
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they → tell → Balloonist
Wisconsin law allows for council meetings to enter closed session – where information discussed is shielded from the public – under a few exemptions, including for the purpose of discussing public business that can remain secret for “competitive or bargaining reasons”.
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that → allow → reasons
Two city councilmembers who were present told the Guardian that members were asked for approval of the pre-development agreement, which laid out how Balloonist would reimburse the city up to $200,000 to conduct site, environmental and traffic reviews related to the project.
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Balloonist → tell → project
Beyond that, the officials said they were offered few details on the development.
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they → say → development
“I don’t remember having any real information on it, other than you know this is a thing that we might look into,” councilmember Cody Gentz told the Guardian.
uncertain
Gentz → remember → Guardian
Gentz described the mood in the room as “pretty neutral” with members not outwardly expressing opposition, but instead wanting to know more about a project that appeared like it could provide badly needed tax revenue for the city.
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it → describe → city
The council voted to proceed.
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council → vote → ?
Atkinson soon began scheduling one-on-one meetings between Balloonist consultants and councilmembers, emails show.
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emails → begin → consultants
Balloonist needed a majority of the council to approve the annexation of the land parcels it had targeted for development, which were not within city limits but in a neighboring village, and rezone them for industrial use.
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which → need → use
One member told Atkinson he felt unprepared to evaluate the project.
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he → tell → project
…and 93 more, not listed.
The Aporia
