One City Council vote may not seem like much in the life of a community.
But according to Northern Nevada commercial real estate broker Matt Harris, the message that vote sends to the business community can have consequences far beyond the project under consideration.
Appearing on Nevada Newsmakers with host Sam Shad, Harris said uncertainty, not necessarily regulation itself, is often what causes companies to reconsider investing in a community.
Harris, co-principal and partner of Street Commercial Real Estate, said his firm was helping a company expand its Northern Nevada footprint when the Reno City Council voted to impose a moratorium on new data centers.
The next day, he said, the client called to put its expansion plans on hold.
“They were worried about what signals that it sent to the marketplace,” Harris said. “Companies don’t like uncertainty. They like to know what the plans are going forward.”
The company was not directly involved in the data center industry, Harris said. Instead, executives questioned what the moratorium suggested about the region’s overall business climate.
That reaction illustrates what Harris calls the “unintended consequences” of government decisions.
While public debate often focuses on the specific project being approved or denied, businesses may be evaluating something entirely different: whether local governments provide predictable rules and long-term stability.
Harris emphasized that companies compare multiple locations before investing millions, or even billions, of dollars in new facilities.
“If they’re willing to nix one whole sector of the market,” he said, companies naturally ask, “What else is next?”
Northern Nevada has spent decades marketing itself as a business-friendly alternative to California, attracting manufacturers, logistics companies and technology firms with lower taxes, available land and a streamlined regulatory environment.
But Harris said that advantage has narrowed in recent years.
Industrial property costs in Northern Nevada have climbed significantly while prices have cooled in parts of California’s Inland Empire, reducing one of Nevada’s traditional competitive advantages.
“If the price is low enough, we can almost withstand any type of regulation,” Harris said. “When the price gets to a point where you can no longer do both, then you look at moving.”
That makes consistency increasingly important.
“We need to stay competitive,” Harris said. “We need to stay competitive by being aligned in our communities and having one message.”
Harris acknowledged that development should not occur without oversight.
“I would never sit here and advocate for just an outright build whatever you want, wherever you want,” he said. “There has to be guidelines.”
Instead, he argued that elected officials should evaluate projects individually rather than adopting broad moratoriums.
He believes planning commissions and elected councils are capable of weighing concerns about water, power, traffic and land use on a case-by-case basis.
“The moratorium sends the wrong message,” Harris said. “Any moratorium, outside of where it’s health and safety, immediate response needed, is the wrong message.”
Although the discussion centered on data centers, Harris suggested the issue extends far beyond a single industry.
He said companies considering manufacturing, logistics and other industrial investments often pay close attention to how communities make decisions because large projects typically involve decades of planning and substantial capital investment.
For those companies, predictability can be as important as taxes, utility costs or available land.
Economic developers often describe Northern Nevada’s business climate as one of the region’s greatest strengths. Harris said maintaining that reputation requires communities to provide consistent expectations while still addressing legitimate public concerns.
Perhaps Harris’ biggest concern isn’t the companies that publicly announce they’re leaving.
It’s the ones the public never hears about.
“I’m really worried about it’s not the companies like this that we know decided not to be here,” he said. “It’s the ones that we never ever will know that don’t come. And that terrifies me.”
Those businesses never hold press conferences announcing they chose another state.
Instead, Harris said, they quietly cross a community off their list before local residents ever know they were considering investing there.
Whether residents support or oppose specific development proposals, Harris said communities should recognize that policy decisions often send broader signals to the marketplace than elected officials may intend.
Those signals, he argues, can influence investment decisions long before the public sees the results.
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