Emily Anderson SternAmid mounting criticism for his role in approving the development of a controversial data center in Box Elder County, longtime Senate President J. Stuart Adams lost his reelection bid last week. But the company behind the project says “it’s business as usual,” and work will go on despite the loss.
Celebrity investor Kevin O’Leary’s Stratos data center project received key approvals from Utah’s powerful Military Installation Development Authority, chaired by Adams.
“Our MIDA designation and master-developer status are in place and unaffected by the election, and we’re continuing to move through the established regulatory, permitting, and design-and-engineering process,” wrote Paul Palandjian, the CEO of O’Leary Ventures, in a statement to The Salt Lake Tribune.
“Elections change personnel; they don’t change the work in front of us,” he added.
O’Leary previously told The Tribune he considered Adams to be his “partner” in the project — a description that Adams did not agree with, saying during a town hall a week before the election that he’d “met the guy once.”
As uproar over the project increased — and it became apparent that Adams’ campaign might be in trouble — O’Leary and Adams announced in early June that the project area would be scaled back.
Under the initial project area proposal MIDA signed off on in April, Stratos would, at full buildout, have encompassed 40,000 acres with plans for a 9-gigawatt data center campus and on-site power generation.
Adams sent O’Leary a letter on June 1 demanding a 75% reduction in the project’s footprint. Now, the company says it will likely be under 10,000 acres. His campaign used that as proof of the senator’s political power.
“He did this for political reasons,” O’Leary told The Tribune at the time. “He had to. What other choice did he have? He had to answer to all these people.”
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Campaign signs for and against Senate President J. Stuart Adams, R-Layton, in Farmington on Saturday, May 23, 2026.
Palandjian blamed voters’ reaction to the data center on the spread of what he said was inaccurate information about the project.
“This race also saw a fair amount of misinformation — including a development footprint described as far larger than what’s planned, and claims about heat that simply aren’t how the technology works,” Palandjian said in the statement. “That had an effect, and politics is politics. But the facts haven’t changed, and neither have we. We’re steadfast, and we’re moving forward.”
A group of Box Elder County residents attempted in May to launch a referendum to reverse approvals of the project by their county commissioners. But Box Elder County Attorney Stephen Hadfield rejected their applications, saying referendum rights only apply to commission actions that create new laws.
The group, Box Elder Accountability Referendum, or BEAR, is suing over the decision. Meanwhile, the two incumbent commissioners up for reelection this year lost their primary races.
Palandjian said O’Leary Ventures plans to collaborate with Utahns and their elected officials as it moves forward with the project.
“We have real respect for the voters of Box Elder County and for the process,” he wrote. “We’ll continue working closely with MIDA, Box Elder County, and Utahns across the state on the issues that matter most to them: refining the project area, environmental review, responsible water use drawn from existing private water rights and further work toward a solution that’s a net positive for the lake.”
Emily is a statewatch reporter at The Salt Lake Tribune, where she has worked since 2022. She received her master's degree in journalism from Northwestern University. There, she worked on investigative projects for The Washington Post and ProPublica. While writing, she's probably spinning something from her ever-expanding shelf of punk records.