The state agreed to sell 32 acres of Salem land to Verrus for $6.7 million in May 2025, more than a year before the public learned a Google-backed data center was headed to town.

Salem Reporter reported Thursday that a state agency signed the contract roughly two months after the City of Salem entered a non-disclosure agreement with Verrus. The city's published FAQ page says the NDA was executed in March 2025. City Manager Krishna Namburi did not disclose the project until the July 13, 2026, City Council meeting, five days after the city was released from the NDA on July 8.

The 32-acre parcel in the Mill Creek Corporate Center, owned by the Oregon Department of Administrative Services, represents about half the land Verrus needs for a proposed 75-acre campus called Oakline at Mill Creek. The overall project is valued at more than $5 billion.

Gov. Tina Kotek, a Salem resident, terminated the pending land sale on July 30 after learning a data center would be built on state land. "I ended the use of state land in a data center development here in Salem because we need to have more conversations about how to do this better," Kotek said in an Aug. 7 press release supporting local moratoriums on data center development.

State Sen. Deb Patterson, D-Salem, questioned who signed the NDA in a July 30 text message to Salem Reporter. "The public has a right to know how public assets are being used or allocated," Patterson said. She indicated she plans to introduce legislation addressing the use of NDAs by elected officials and public employees.

Verrus spokesperson JP Newmann called the governor's decision "unilateral and without consultation" in a July 30 statement, saying the company had not had the chance to present its design or community benefit proposals.

The California-based company emerged from stealth in 2024 as a venture of Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners, an Alphabet spin-out. CEO Nelson Abramson spent 20 years at Google, including time on its data center team. Verrus has not completed a data center of its own, according to Salem Reporter's Aug. 19 profile of the company.

Verrus has since pivoted.

A revised application filed July 31 through subsidiary Alderstone LLC covers about 100 acres from private landowners and describes two buildings totaling roughly 600,000 square feet, valued at $694 million. The city notified Alderstone on Aug. 28 that the application was incomplete. Under Oregon law, Alderstone has until Jan. 27, 2027, to supply the missing information or the application becomes void.

The Salem City Council voted unanimously Aug. 3 to begin the process of imposing a moratorium on AI data centers and rewriting the city's zoning code. City Attorney Dan Atchison estimated the earliest formal moratorium hearing would fall around the Sept. 21 council meeting.