Joel EngelhardtFour-month postponement gives developers time to answer questions, conduct studies, suggest solutions.
Facing a deluge of criticism and seeking time to clarify details and conduct studies, the backers of a massive computer data storage facility on Southern Boulevard west of Arden agreed Wednesday to postpone their zoning request for four months until April 23.
After nearly two hours of debate, including more than an hour of public comment, Palm Beach County commissioners unanimously granted the request.
Mayor Sara Baxter, who represents the area, said she asked the developers to seek a postponement to give them time to conduct a noise study and continue working on solutions with neighbors, mostly in the 2,300-home Arden community 4 miles west of Seminole Pratt Whitney Road.
“If they can’t prove beyond a doubt that this is absolutely safe for the residents, I wouldn’t support it,” Baxter said.
The property’s owners, longtime landowners PBA Holdings and Atlanta-based TPA Group, want to increase the permitted amount of space devoted to data storage to nearly 1.8 million square feet from 206,000 square feet on 202 acres.
Hyperscale data storage in at least 11 buildings up to 75 feet tall would go next to Palm Beach Aggregates’ rock-mining pits and a Florida Power & Light Co. natural-gas powered energy plant about 1,150 feet west of the gated Arden community and the newly opened Saddle View Elementary School.
The proposal also calls for about the same amount of warehouse space as previously approved, 1.9 million square feet. An asphalt plant and a concrete plant on the site at 20-Mile Bend would be removed.
Neighbors are worried about the effects of noise on their children from 24/7 air-cooling operations, demanding a study to take into account noise effects, including the low-frequency hum produced by the machinery.
They’re worried about excessive power and water use, especially since the applicant has not declared how much power would be needed or which of four approaches to cooling would be employed, some with water and some without.
For the applicant, the postponement provides an opportunity to counter misinformation, project manager Ernie Cox said. For instance, while online posts have said the center will have diesel-fueled generators, it will not, Cox said after the meeting.
It also provides time to offer solutions to block noise or thicken buffers on either side of a 200-foot-wide canal that separates the properties.
The proposal before commissioners called for final decisions on water consumption, noise abatement and the project’s site plan to be made after zoning approval. Some of those details may now be ready beforehand.
Once the zoning is granted, county staff would be charged with signing off that the applicant met all the county’s conditions before construction could begin. That means that once zoning is approved, the project does not return to the County Commission for final approval in a public setting.
No incentives offered to tech company
The proposal had been on a fast track, moving in less than a week from a public hearing before the Zoning Commission to Wednesday’s hearing before the County Commission. Even though the site has had zoning that allows some data center use since 2016 and was expanded by 64 acres earlier this year, residents said they only learned about the proposal at the beginning of December.
The developers said in their application that they have a binding power service agreement with FPL that would have “strict timelines to develop the required substations and AI use needed to accept the power, and to begin utilizing the power.”
While an FPL representative attended the meeting, he did not speak.
The proposal has a code name, Project Tango, and the backing of the county’s chief economic recruiter, the Business Development Board. No economic development incentives, such as tax exemptions, have been offered for the project, BDB President and CEO Kelly Smallridge told Stet News.
“The BDB’s role is in finding that end-user which falls in line with our technology- and innovation-based economic development strategy,” Smallridge wrote in an email.
The owners have not identified the end-user, but the biggest tech companies racing to build data storage facilities across the country to meet the demand for artificial intelligence computing are Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Google.
NextEra Energy, FPL’s parent, announced Monday an expanded partnership with Alphabet’s Google Cloud to add 15 gigawatts, or possibly more, of new power generation for data centers by 2035, Reuters reported.
‘World’s first, non-scary AI data center’
In comments Wednesday, Rogers Clawson, an Arden resident who works in the data center industry, said he would never recommend a site so close to homes and a school to any of his customers. No matter how much more they study it, he said, “It takes me 10 seconds to look at, and it’s a clear no.”
Corey Kanterman, an Arden resident, mocked a comment from Cox, who said: “If you go on the internet, there’s a lot of really scary stuff about data centers. We’re not going to build one of those.”
Kanterman said he backed the postponement “because I’m really excited to hear about the world’s first, non-scary AI data center being built right next to my community.”
Shea Hoffman of Arden dismissed the idea that further study could help.
“We all have a chance today to put our foot down with a very decisive ‘no,’” he said. “We look at the map and it doesn’t make any sense. We don’t need any more information.
“If you want to postpone it, fine, we’ll all be back,” he said. “There probably will be more of us.”
Commissioners wrestled with interpretations of their own zoning rules, which have allowed data centers on industrial lands even before artificial intelligence changed the industry with its huge appetite for computer servers.
The difference between data centers in 2016 and data centers now is “like asking for a horse stall for three horses or I want a racetrack,” Commissioner Maria Sachs said. “Is it the same animal legally that we are looking at today?”
Cox countered: “The original application was to create a data center, which is essentially a building full of computers,” he said. “What’s being proposed today is a building full of computers.”
Watch the commission meeting here (starting at 29:00).
Click here to read Stet’s coverage of the Dec. 4 meeting.
Joel is a founder, reporter and editor at Stet News. His award-winning newspaper career spanned more than 40 years, including 28 years at The Palm Beach Post, which he left in 2020. Joel lives with his wife in Palm Beach Gardens. He volunteers on the board of NAMI Palm Beach County and the Palm Beach Gardens Historical Society.
