Ex-NYC Mayor Eric Adams Promised to Pitch a Wisconsin Data Center With ‘Rigor.’ His Failure Was Spectacular.

NewsEx-NYC Mayor Eric Adams Promised to Pitch a Wisconsin Data Center With ‘Rigor.’ His Failure Was Spectacular.New York City-based media outlet Hell Gate went to Wisconsin Rapids to trace the footsteps of Adams, whose 'sneaky' plan to build community trust imploded in spectacular fashion. By Max Rivlin-Nadler10:27 AM CDT on October 14, 2026Add Racket to GoogleEric Adams photo by John Taggart, Wisconsin photo by Hell Gate; illustration by Hell Gate3CommentsThis story was originally published by our buddies at Hell Gate, the indispensable New York City publication that's owned and operated by the staffers—sounds familiar! You can and should sign up for their free newsletters here, and hey, if you've got even a passing interest in NYC and/or worker-owned independent media, become a paying member. Even for a born pitchman like Eric Adams, a data center was always going to be a tough sell.So when video surfaced of the former New York City mayor being mercilessly heckled by angry residents in a central Wisconsin library as he tried to convince them of the benefits of building a 150-megawatt data center at the site of an old paper mill, the record-scratch, freeze-frame questions asked themselves.How did Adams spend his time in Wisconsin? What was his plan to make this work? And who, exactly, thought this was a good idea?We traveled to Wisconsin Rapids to find out.According to interviews with residents and opponents of the data center, and documents they obtained through public records requests, Adams did not handle the assignment well: He attempted to jam months of planning and outreach into a little more than six weeks, and he failed to show up to a fraction of the events he had promised to.In fact, when Hell Gate visited Wisconsin Rapids last month, we spoke to dozens of people, none of whom had so much as shaken hands with the ex-mayor or bumped into him at a restaurant or barber shop as he pitched the project to the town.By the time Adams was being booed at the library in the video, he may have given up on making any kind of lasting positive impression. According to flight records from FlightRadar24.com, a private jet left from Teterboro Airport in New Jersey at 7:15 a.m. the day of the meeting, landed in Wisconsin Rapids at 9:07 a.m. local time, and then left Wisconsin Rapids at 2:07 p.m., a little more than three hours after the meeting began. "They came for an hour, and we actually flipped them off as they flew overhead," said Marissa Johnson, a local EMT and co-founder of the anti-data center group, South Wood County Neighbors for Responsible Development, who was at the meeting."I was offended that they thought we were so stupid as to be charmed by Eric Adams, the celebrity that he wants to play," said Kaitlyn Federwitz, the owner of a vintage store in Wisconsin Rapids, who also co-founded the group. "Because no matter what side of the political spectrum you fall on, Eric Adams is not a popular man."Former Mayor Eric Adams does his best to pitch a data center in Wisconsin RapidsSouth Wood County Neighbors for Responsible DevelopmentWisconsin Rapids, population 18,654, is almost smack-dab in the middle of the state, two and a half hours from Milwaukee, and just over three hours from Minneapolis. It has long been a paper mill town, like many other cities along the Wisconsin River. But the Wisconsin Rapids Paper Mill closed in 2020 and was torn down around 18 months ago, eliminating 900 local jobs. The paper mill had cycled through several owners over the last few decades—yet another example of private equity swallowing up American industry—and for a time was owned by Apollo Global Management, the asset management company founded by Jeffrey Epstein associate Leon Black.Mike Schmidt is a trial lawyer who practices family law and is in court almost every day. He was raised in Wisconsin, and is sympathetic to the argument that the city needs to replace the tax revenue lost from the demise of the paper mill.   "We have two choices: increase the property tax levy, by hook or by crook, or cut services, and we all know in most places that austerity measures are not good for the economy," Schmidt told me in his second-story office, which has a view of the Wisconsin River, and is directly across the river from the 209-acre proposed data center site."And that's what renders [cities like ours] vulnerable to people like the PNK Group," Schmidt said. PNK Group, the company that tapped Adams on the data center project, was originally founded in Russia, according to its company website, then set up an office in Lower Manhattan in 2017 (the company claims it withdrew from Russia entirely in 2024). In recent years, PNK Group had ridden the logistics boom, touting technology that could purportedly construct a warehouse quickly and with minimal human effort. Earlier in 2026, the company sold a warehouse it had built in Georgia to the federal government to be used for ICE detention. The sale spurred over a dozen senators and congressmembers to write a letter to the owner of PNK Group questioning whether its warehouses were suited to human habitation.As the AI arms race ramped up, PNK Group began approaching cities across the country about building data centers, including Wisconsin Rapids.PNK Group offered to make investments in Wisconsin Rapids in exchange for building the 150-megawatt data center, which is big enough to power around 100,000 homes. The company never specified exactly how much tax revenue the city would reap from the data center, but eventually, after prodding by city officials, PNK Group said it would invest $5.7 million toward emergency services, riverfront access, and conservation and workforce training. It also refused to divulge who the data center would eventually be used by, but did say it would not be for generating cryptocurrency. Sometime this spring, PNK Group approached Adams to become their go-to for helping sell skeptical Wisconsin Rapids residents on the data center proposal.