A shell company called Balloonist LLC pitched a $1.6bn hyperscale datacenter campus on a 320-acre site outside Menomonie, Wisconsin, a city of about 17,000. City administrator Eric Atkinson and public works director David Schofield signed NDAs with the developer in February 2024, and the council approved a pre-development agreement in closed session in March 2025. The agreement had Balloonist reimbursing up to $200,000 for site, environmental and traffic reviews. According to emails, records and interviews obtained by the Guardian, the city and developer planned in secret for nearly 18 months until a July 2025 press release, and community backlash eventually doomed the project.
The case shows how shell companies and NDAs can keep elected officials in the dark while zoning definitions are changed to fit a datacenter. The Guardian reports NDAs were reportedly signed in at least four other Wisconsin cities, and Balloonist's NDAs in Beaver Dam covered a $1bn project later revealed to be Meta's. Secrecy of this kind is a factor in the community resistance developers now face.
A $1.6bn US project was stopped by a local community, so the story is community pushback with a concrete outcome. The Guardian's reporting on secrecy and the local result ranked it high.