The economic development agency that originally greenlit the proposed Box Elder County data center says it has paused action, but its celebrity financial backer said his company’s work on the project is still in full swing.

A spokesperson for Utah’s Military Installation Development Authority, which created the Stratos project area that would house Wonder Valley Utah, said Wednesday that the agency’s work is “paused at this time as there is no action before us, and we continue to respect the referendum process.”

Box Elder County residents behind the referendum have appealed the county attorney’s ruling against an effort to put the project to voters in November. O’Leary Digital Utah has filed as an intervening defendant in the case, meaning it has entered the ongoing lawsuit to join the defense and protect the company’s interest and stake in the outcome of the case.

A separate lawsuit challenges the validity of the MIDA board itself.

There is a distinction between MIDA’s work and the work celebrity investor Kevin O’Leary’s team is doing “to advance the power and data center design and engineering process,” said Paul Palandjian, the CEO of O’Leary Digital.

Palandjian said MIDA is “standing by” while the company takes those critical steps.

“There is no action for MIDA to take until we are ready for permit submittals that will follow the completion of our predevelopment work,” he said in an email.

The MIDA board has a meeting tentatively scheduled for 9 a.m. on Aug. 18. There is no agenda posted yet.

Clearfield Mayor Mark Shepherd – one of the MIDA board’s seven voting members – said during a forum earlier this month that the agency needs to let the referendum appeal run its course.

MIDA is “not even close,” Shepherd said, to issuing permits on the hyperscale data center campus, which has been proposed to sit on about 10,000 acres in remote Box Elder County, surrounded by another 10,000 or so acres that O’Leary told The Tribune would be left as open land between buildings and for possible solar power or battery arrays.

O’Leary, sometimes known on “Shark Tank” as “Mr. Wonderful,” is backing the project along with another data center complex in Alberta, also called Wonder Valley.

O‘Leary said Wednesday that the project isn’t paused.

“We are full steam ahead on the project and even more optimistic about the economic benefits it will bring to Utah,” O’Leary said in an email.

O’Leary’s team hopes to file for the water permit by the end of August, he added.

And in early August, Palandjian said, the company will start work with MIDA to refine the project area to fit O’Leary’s promise to reduce the scale.