Communities hosting AI infrastructure deserve more than temporary jobs and voluntary promises. We help you secure enforceable benefits that build lasting prosperity.
Start a ConversationWhen communities negotiate from strength, they can secure:
Local hiring commitments and apprenticeship pipelines with community colleges
Billions in procurement channeled to homegrown small businesses
Investments in affordable housing and displacement prevention
Modernized water, transit, and digital systems
Transparency requirements and community oversight
Enforceable agreements with real consequences
The gains compound long after construction ends.
AI operators are building data centers at unprecedented scale. McKinsey estimates $7 trillion will be invested in AI infrastructure by 2030. Individual projects now rival the cost of historic public works—some requiring tens of billions of dollars in a single community.
These investments will either extract from communities or become the biggest engine of local economic development in decades. The difference lies in how they are negotiated and delivered.
Today's data center boom exposes a fundamental imbalance:
Tech companies negotiate nationally with sophisticated teams, deep data, and long time horizons.
Communities negotiate once a decade with limited information, constrained bandwidth, and accelerated timelines.
This structural gap makes genuine collaboration unlikely—leaving communities worse off, tech companies falling short of their stated missions, and developers facing ongoing public opposition.
Civic Returns exists to correct this imbalance.
We support communities in structuring and negotiating binding Community Benefits Agreements while projects are still being sited, permitted, and incentivized—when your leverage is highest.
Securing commitments is only the first step. We help design public dashboards, reporting requirements, and accountability mechanisms so promises become reality.
Most communities negotiate in isolation. We provide deal benchmarks, landscape analyses, and a community of practice where local leaders learn from one another.
In the U.S., 74 hyperscale data centers are planned for 2026 and another 60 for 2027-2028. Development timelines are accelerating. Negotiating leverage weakens significantly after approvals are granted and construction begins.
Communities that act now can shape projects toward shared prosperity. Those that wait will inherit the consequences of deals made without them.