How should our city zone data centers

Visitor Question: Our city does not yet have any data centers, but we know, or maybe we fear, that they are coming.

Given the complaints we hear in other nearby locations about massive electricity use, major water use, noise, and blank walls, we are interested in how we might use our zoning ordinance to specify where these big and probably ugly uses belong. My family is especially interested in where they don't belong. What zoning districts do you see as being suitable for allowing data centers? Are there any ways to inhibit their development through zoning?

Editors Reply: This is a timely question. Many cities and towns need to think about this potential problem right now, hopefully before they are faced with an application from a developer with major financial backing.

We haven't seen many topics so apt to generate heated controversy in the last year or two in our location.

To my mind, data centers only belong in industrial zoning districts, or perhaps in a warehouse district if you have something that specialized.

One could argue that your heaviest commercial zoning is appropriate also, but do you really want to see a data center in your downtown area or in a major corridor of big box stores? I don't think you do.

So let's rule out commercial districts and talk about industrial. Typical zoning ordinances might include a Light Industrial district and another one called Heavy Industrial. If you have these two traditional categories, I suggest allowing data centers only in Heavy Industrial. Even so, I would want to add a strict site plan approval provision (if you don't already require site plan review for everything) and allow them only as a conditional use.

The conditional use permit mechanism would allow your city council to impose whatever conditions it considered important to fit the circumstances. Relevant to data centers, the conditional use permit means that the use is allowable in that zoning district only as long as the conditions are met. This method makes promises that a developer is sure to make into enforceable provisions.

Granted, it would be pretty hard to kick out a data center that has massive investment and infrastructure behind it, but maybe at least you could make them think twice. You would not be able to gain better behavior by imposing fines, which can be a typical zoning enforcement mechanism, either.

However, in the end, the conditional use permit is about as close as you can come to laying out provisions for approval that must be met at all times.

The heavy industry district, or your local equivalent thereof, is appropriate instead of light industrial for the two reasons that you already cite: (1) electrical grid requirements are staggering, and (2) high water use for cooling is the usual method of operation of these things.

You didn't ask, but I will mention one other aspect of this. You need a definition of a data center in your zoning ordinance that is crystal clear about what you mean. "Data center" sounds like a new thing to many people, but actually we have had buildings that house little but computer servers for quite a few years. It is simply the scale that is necessary for data storage "in the cloud" and for artificial intelligence applications that have made the data center terminology come into focus for us. In addition, there is a relatively new pattern of co-location, in which businesses rent space for their servers from one building owner.

You will need to specify in your definition of data center exactly what types of business activities and perhaps what size operation you consider a data center. That is especially true if you want to adopt my suggestion of allowing data centers only in the most rigorous heavy industry zoning category you have and only upon granting of a conditional use permit, rather than as an allowable use "as of right."

Lastly, try to get this discussion started before your city's plan commission at their very next meeting. The deliberations will be much easier if the council chambers are not filled with irate townspeople.

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