Louisiana
Louisiana changed quickly and in a direction that favours rural ground. The state's headline data center project went to Richland Parish, in the northeast delta, not to Baton Rouge or the river corridor. So the first questions are practical: which parish are you in, who serves your power, and what transmission runs near you. Send us the parish, a rough acreage, and anything you have noticed nearby, including any pipeline, well, or servitude history on the place. We check it against public records at no cost and tell you what we find, including when the answer is that it does not suit.
Everybody asks this first and it deserves an answer rather than a dodge. We are not going to publish a per acre figure for Louisiana. A number offered before anyone has looked at your particular ground is not information, and in a state where two adjacent tracts can differ enormously in what is buildable it would mislead more often than it helped. What we can do is be exact about what moves it.
The electrical picture around the property does more than acreage or soil rating. Ground beside a substation with headroom is a different asset to ground fifteen miles from any, and nothing in the conveyance records distinguishes them.
In Louisiana the gap between deed acres and buildable acres is often wide. Wetland delineation and elevation do more to the number here than in most states, and a smaller place that is all usable can be worth more than a larger one that is half water.
Mineral servitudes, pipeline rights of way, and existing agreements do not necessarily reduce value and can indicate infrastructure is close. What they do is affect certainty, and certainty is a large part of what a buyer is paying for.
Some landowners take payment for a period of exclusivity while a project establishes whether it can build, and keep farming throughout. Others sell. The money, the certainty, and the tax treatment all differ, and which suits you is about your circumstances rather than your acreage.
An option period commonly runs a year or more and the ground generally carries on in row crop or pasture exactly as before. Survey and soil crews appear occasionally and work around the operation.
Large low buildings, a substation, fencing, and lighting through the night. We are not going to tell you it blends into the treeline. Quieter than an interstate, considerably busier than a field.
Louisiana is actively arguing about whether existing customers end up carrying the cost of serving very large new loads, and it has reached the governor's office. Expect the question at a parish meeting and expect it to be asked seriously, because it is a serious question.
Cooling approaches differ enormously in how much water they need, and in parts of this state groundwater is already a live subject. Ask any developer directly what their cooling design is, early, and judge them partly on how willingly they answer.
Because it settled the question of whether these projects will consider rural Louisiana, and the answer turned out to be yes. Transmission and attention followed it, and developers looking at Louisiana now start from a different set of assumptions about where the ground is. It does not mean your place works, but it means the question is worth asking.
Not automatically, and existing infrastructure sometimes indicates that power and access are nearby. What it does mean is that the recorded interests have to be read carefully and early, because they affect certainty. Raise them in the first conversation rather than letting a title examiner find them later.
Most of the state is Entergy Louisiana, with Cleco through the centre and west and SWEPCO in the northwest, and cooperatives serving rural parishes. It matters because that utility owns the connection, and because who pays to serve very large new loads is currently being argued out here. Your bill names your provider.
That is being actively contested in Louisiana rather than settled. There have been formal concerns that existing customers could absorb costs tied to serving these facilities, and the governor has acted on them. We are not going to tell you it is a non-issue. It is the question to put to your parish and to the utility.
There is no fixed number and anybody offering one without seeing your ground is guessing. In Louisiana the more useful question is how many of your acres are actually buildable, since deed acres and usable acres often differ considerably here.
Do not sign, and do not treat a deadline in the letter as real. Find out whether they are buying for themselves or for a party they have not named. Have a Louisiana attorney read it first. That applies to a letter from us exactly as much as from anybody else.
Often nothing. Many arrangements involve part of a property while the remainder carries on as it was. It is a fair thing to raise at the start, and we would rather hear it in the first conversation than the fifth.
Most of Louisiana is served by Entergy Louisiana, with Cleco covering a substantial stretch of the central and western part of the state and SWEPCO serving the northwest around Shreveport. Rural ground in a number of parishes is on a member-owned cooperative instead. Which one you are on matters because that utility owns the connection and, in this state at the moment, because the question of who pays to serve a very large new load is being argued out utility by utility. Your bill names your provider, and telling us which it is saves a step.
Louisiana rebates state and local sales and use tax on qualifying data center equipment and construction under Act 730 of 2024, codified at Revised Statute 47:305.73. To qualify, an operator has to intend at least 200 million dollars of new capital investment in Louisiana between July 2024 and July 2029, and create at least 50 new direct permanent jobs. Certification runs through Louisiana Economic Development on a sworn attestation from the operator. The rebate runs twenty years with an option to renew for a further ten. Two things about how this has worked in practice are worth knowing. The scale has been very large. The northeast Louisiana project has been reported as securing sales tax relief measured in billions over its life, approved at parish level in 2024, which gives some sense of why developers are looking here rather than elsewhere. It has also drawn substantial criticism, and you will hear it locally. The programme has been described as carrying no wage standards, no routine reporting requirements, and no automatic clawbacks if a company does not deliver what it promised. Separately, the governor has acted on concerns that existing utility customers could end up absorbing the cost of serving these loads. None of this money reaches you as a landowner. It matters because it explains the level of interest in Louisiana ground, and because the argument around it is the argument your parish will be having.
Programs change. Confirm anything that matters to your decision with your own advisor before acting on it.
Richland and the parishes around it, in the delta farm country of northeast Louisiana, where the state's headline project landed. Attention and transmission have followed it outward rather than stopping at the project boundary, which is the single biggest change to this state's picture.
Running west from the northeast parishes through Monroe toward Shreveport, with existing transmission, industrial history, and large agricultural tracts on both sides.
Cleco territory around Alexandria and Rapides, with timber and farm ground, established transmission, and land prices well below the southern part of the state.
The industrial stretch between Baton Rouge and New Orleans has the heaviest power infrastructure in the state, but land there is expensive, congested, and largely spoken for by existing industry.
Around Lake Charles, with generation and transmission built for petrochemical industry. Elevation and storm exposure do more of the deciding here than anywhere else in the state.