A massive 300-acre complex in the middle of the New Mexico desert, miles from the site where the U.S. develops nuclear weapons, does seem like a good setting for a future episode of Stranger Things, the hit supernatural nostalgia trip from Netflix. That’s where the streaming series will shoot as it resumes filming its fourth season this year. But the crew from Hawkins, Indiana, was not drawn to Albuquerque by the nuclear mysteries or proximity to Roswell aliens. It took corporate tax incentives to lure Netflix to the Land of Enchantment.

The steaming platform is investing heavily in its Albuquerque production hub, located in a sprawling development on a desert plateau southeast of the city called Mesa Del Sol. In 2018, the company bought ABQ Studios, an existing production site, at a steep discount and promised to film a billion dollars’ worth of projects in New Mexico. The $30 million acquisition gave Mesa DelSol — a master-planned community designed by famed New Urbanist architect Peter Calthorpe that had fallen on hard times — a new lease on life.

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Albuquerque’s new role as Netflix’s North American production hub will offer a case study in whether these kinds of industry subsidies ultimately pay off for the host communities. Local officials hope that the deal will not only spur local economic development, but seed a permanent film and TV production ecosystem in the region. Content creation is booming, making the search for studio space competitive: In December, Disney announced it would spending up to $9 billion a year on streaming content by 2024. To Alicia J. Keyes, who suggested Netflix buy ABQ during her 2018 stint as the head of Albuquerque’s film office, the incentives represent a smart investment in a growing sector, not an Amazon-HQ2-style race-to-the-bottom.  “You are our partners — we’re investing in you as you’re investing in us,” says Keyes, a former Disney exec who is now the cabinet secretary for New Mexico Economic Development under Democratic Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham.

But others warn that betting on film production as an economic development strategy carries risks. Pat Garofalo, director of state and local policy at the nonprofit American Economic Liberties Project and author of The Billionaire Boondoggle, says such deals invite “perpetual competitive purgatory,” where states and cities have to constantly spend more to prop up the industry they paid to come in the first place.