MIDA approved the 40,000-acre Stratos data center in April 2026. The House Speaker says he was blindsided by a project that turned up ten miles from his own 25,000 acres — but the investor behind it says the Speaker was in the room a year earlier than he admits, and the state authority that approved it is chaired by the same Senate President who was reportedly in that room too.
"Do you have the land? — 40,000 acres."
Kevin O'Leary, describing a late-2025 conversation with Gov. Cox, Speaker Schultz, and Senate President Adams — Fox News, "Fox & Friends," April 27, 2026
On April 24, 2026, the Military Installation Development Authority — MIDA, the state-created land-use authority already documented across this investigation for its property-tax powers, its transparency exemptions, and its Senate President chairman — unanimously approved the Stratos Project Area, clearing the way for a data center campus roughly the size of Manhattan in Box Elder County. Ten days later, the Box Elder County Commission approved it too. That sequence — MIDA first, the county second, with the county board later saying its vote felt more involuntary than voluntary — is the same structural pattern already documented at Deer Valley and Sundance: a state board decides, and the local government ratifies.
Speaker Mike Schultz's public account of what happened next is simple: he found out about the project in early April 2026, the same as everyone else, and was "blindsided." His own land — more than 25,000 acres, about ten miles from the project site — is, he says, "remote" ranch land, not suitable for development. The problem is that Kevin O'Leary, the celebrity investor bankrolling the project, has publicly described sitting in a room with Schultz, the Governor, and Senate President Stuart Adams — MIDA's own chairman — months before that, being asked directly whether the land was available.
MIDA's board approved the entire Stratos package in a single April 24, 2026 meeting: the Project Area Plan, its standards and guidelines, the development agreement with the developer, a municipal energy sales-and-use tax ordinance, and an interlocal agreement with Box Elder County. The vote was unanimous. Board member Gage Froerer voiced Weber County's support; non-voting member Jefferson Moss touted "economic growth potential for Northern Utah." The referral that sent Stratos to MIDA in the first place, in January 2026, came from Moss's own office at the Governor's Office of Economic Opportunity, citing "military use."
MIDA's chairman is Senate President Stuart Adams — the same official Kevin O'Leary says was in the late-2025 meeting where the land question was asked. Adams chaired the board that approved the project, then five weeks later sent O'Leary a public letter demanding a 75% reduction in the footprint — a request that came after approval, not before it, and while Adams was in a contested primary he would go on to lose that June, with the Stratos backlash cited as a key factor.
MIDA's deal terms, separate from the land question: the authority cut Stratos's energy-use tax from a standard 6% down to 0.5%, and agreed to rebate 80% of the property tax revenue the project generates back to the developer. Box Elder County's own commissioners had no negotiating role in any of it — MIDA set the terms on April 24; the county voted to accept them ten days later without taking public comment from the 1,000-plus residents who showed up to oppose it.
KSL and Salt Lake Tribune reporting confirms the acreage independently — not just the claim of a single advocacy site. Three of Schultz's disclosed entities hold land within roughly ten miles of the Stratos Project Area:
Total: more than 25,000 acres, most of it purchased in 2022. On his own annual conflict-of-interest disclosure, Mike Schultz Inc. is listed every year only as "Holding Company" — the optional field for disclosing specific real property has been left blank every year on record. A 2024 Utah Investigative Journalism Project review separately found four of his real estate entities missing from his disclosure entirely, added only after a reporter asked; the Legislature's stated explanation was that he "no longer oversees day-to-day operations."
The corporate structure around the entity nearest the Stratos land shifted twice in the run-up to the project's approval: Schultz became an Officer in March 2025, then Incorporator in March 2026, with the entity's principal office moved to his own personal address.
Asked about O'Leary's account, Schultz didn't deny the meeting happened. He deflected: "I wasn't a part of that," and that he "was too busy." That's not the same as saying it didn't happen.
Sen. Scott Sandall, R-Box Elder, sponsored SB 132 (2025) — the bill that created the legal framework that made the Stratos power arrangement possible. His own family's land, held through the Sandall Farm & Ranch Family Partnership, sits roughly four miles from the project site. Asked by ABC4 whether anyone had approached him about selling, he gave a direct, on-record answer:
No one has approached him about selling — but he "would not be opposed to it, for the right price."
Sen. Scott Sandall, to ABC4
A second legislator holding land near a project his own bill enabled — not proof of coordination on its own, but the same structural pattern as Schultz, from a different direction: land in hand before the enabling law, an honest answer about its market value once asked directly.
CentraCom, a telecommunications company founded in 1903, has been in Gov. Spencer Cox's family for generations. His own father currently serves as the company's president. Whether Cox himself holds a direct financial stake, and whether CentraCom stands to gain specifically from Stratos's build-out, isn't established here — the family and corporate connection is real and confirmed; the financial-interest question is not yet answered one way or the other.