Board adopts tax assessor’s $292.12M per‑building valuation for five Amazon/AWS data centers

In a public hearing about appeals to the preliminary 2026 tax roll, James Polianski, representing Amazon Data Services (AWS), presented an industry cost approach that estimated each 215,000-square-foot building at roughly $69.98 million — about $324 per square foot — and asked the county to reduce the assessed value. "The estimated base cost of is, $234 per square foot," Polianski said while describing his cost and market comparables.

The county tax assessor (Kennedy) explained the assessor’s office calculated a true value of $292,123,055 per building, reflecting specialized data‑center systems and benchmarks, and urged the board to uphold the assessment. "Our true value for the 2026 tax roll for real property is 292,123,055," Kennedy said.

Polianski told the board AWS generally does not disclose internal construction costs for competitive reasons; he said the company would consider a protective-order arrangement. "It's an internal policy," he said when asked why AWS would not provide internal cost details. The tax assessor noted state statute 27-1-23 authorizes the assessor to demand project-specific data and offered to accept confidential documentation under a non‑disclosure agreement. After discussion the board voted to adopt the assessor’s value as the true value for the five appealed PINs tied to the data centers, instructing staff to reflect the adopted values on the final 2026 tax roll.