I would expect big money coming into a small town to face serious static from local authorities unless and until you're cozied up to its political scene.
Start hiring people to work for your business and a lot of problems go away. If you are spreading the wealth around, the politicians are more likely to listen.
If you think about this from the perspective of the city council, there was this big warehouse that they thought was perfect for a company like Amazon, which would have given them hundreds of jobs. Instead, a random rich guy buys it and employs nobody.
Sure it's a problem, but it's very real. I have experienced an inverse correlation of town size vs. corruption: in my experience, the smaller the town, the more off-the-charts the corruption. YMMV.
I can think of many exceptions to this both on large and small "towns" and depending on what is meant by corruption. E.g., NYC is very large but not exactly friendly to business nor easy to navigate unless you have lots of money to spread around to "permit expeditors"" and oddly interested neighborhood groups and of course lots of lawyers and even then it's a roll of the dice on whether you'll be allowed to operate in an economically viable manner.
This individual claims to have swooped into town and bought SEVENTY-SIX properties with no documented experience doing this sort of thing.
I see nothing wrong with the fact that he's having trouble doing what he wants, he probably isn't coming close to remotely following proper procedure and clearly lacks experience, as he stated that he could barely even afford the first property - a 220k square foot warehouse he bought with apparently no business and no experience owning warehouses.
Given it's a town of 40k people, I doubt there's rampant corruption and more OP just doesn't have any idea how anything works at all. If any of his statements are true, this guy needs to stop what he's doing and learn how to adult.
The town has asked him for plans on how he will be using the building so they can apply the applicable building code. He's refused, citing the cost ($10k by his estimate) but he's since gone and bought 75 properties in town.
If you're going to refurb a giant warehouse to be a fireworks storage facility, that's different from building a daycare, which is different from "run an internet company and makerspace", etc.
Given his history includes free-energy crap (his own fusion reactor design) and running for Mayor of Provo, UT on a platform of disincorporating the city, I would guess the problem is that this guy is a libertarian and thus thinks rules don't apply to him.
