Joel EngelhardtArden residents lead opposition to county’s first major data center request, but options remain for passage.
The crowd did not pack the Palm Beach County Zoning Commission hearing room and spill out into the corridor, as many expected.
Thursday’s session on the Project Tango hyperscale AI data center, just before the extended Fourth of July weekend, drew only about 80 people.
But 39 of them spoke — all opposed to the request to increase the development rights on the 202-acre site north of Southern Boulevard at 20-Mile Bend known as Project Tango.
“We are small compared to the political power and the wealth that the companies … will be wielding against us,” Tony Reyes, a resident of the neighboring Arden community, said in urging denial. “Once this is built, there is no going back.”
And the Zoning Commission listened.
By a 6-0 vote, the commission recommended denial of Project Tango’s request to nearly double the allowed development on the site to 3.6 million square feet, with 1 million square feet set aside for a data center and most of the rest for warehouses.
The Zoning Commission had blessed a similar request in December, but it never got County Commission approval and came back to the board because the property owner made substantial changes.
Zoning Commissioner Susan Kennedy, a retired attorney, laid the foundation for the denial, establishing that the board heard enough examples of “competent, substantial evidence” that the project would not comply with the zoning, a threshold to vote for denial.
Showdown set for July 15
The denial doesn’t mean Project Tango, the county’s first proposed hyperscale data center, is going away.
First, there’s the July 15 Palm Beach County Commission zoning hearing, where commissioners could disregard the zoning board’s recommendation and approve the request.
County commissioners will probably see a larger crowd. Project Tango opponent Ben Brown promised exponentially more people would show up at that meeting, which has been on their calendars for months.
That vote could come down to six commissioners, since the county attorney has urged the district’s commissioner, Sara Baxter, to recuse herself because she has declared her intention to oppose it, which isn’t allowed in quasi-judicial zoning deliberations.
Second, even if county commissioners reject the expansion, the owners of the majority of the land, PBA Holdings, have existing approvals they can pursue without public hearings. They’ve already put in applications for administrative approvals for 752,000 square feet of data center space, up from an initial guarantee of 206,000 square feet, on the chance their current request fails.
Dueling landowners
Their potential for success, however, is diluted by a rearguard action brought by an Atlanta company that contracted in 2021 to buy most of the property for what was then envisioned to be a warehouse park.
WPB Logistics Owner, backed by TPA Group of Atlanta, apparently has caught the data center bug that grips so many builders nationwide. As the owner of 60 acres within the 202-acre site, WPB Logistics is working to get county zoning staff’s sign-off on the conversion to data center space of 1.2 million square feet of approved warehouse space.
WPB Logistics bought the 60-acre site, considered the first phase of its involvement, in 2023 from PBA Holdings. But its 2021 contract, made public as part of its lawsuit against PBA Holdings, also calls for PBA to obtain zoning approvals for Phase 2, an additional 75-acre piece.
That’s precisely what PBA Holdings’ Ernie Cox was asking the Zoning Commission to do.
He reduced his December request for 1.8 million square feet of data center space to 1 million square feet and upped the warehouse number to 2.3 million square feet from 1.9 million.
Even so, WPB Logistics’ attorney Tara Duhy argued that Cox did not have the right to pursue the expanded development because her client, as a property owner and contract purchaser, did not give its consent.
She urged the Zoning Commission to shelve its deliberations and wait for the courts to sort out what should happen next, a move the Zoning Commission rejected on the advice of its attorney, who argued that PBA Holdings did not need the contract buyer’s consent.
Duhy also argued that her client would be forced to accept development conditions imposed by the county despite having no say in them.
Changing the master plan also is likely to affect her client’s property. While PBA Holdings asked for just 1 million square feet of data center space, her client is asking for an additional 1.1 million square feet on its 60 acres.
Sound impact and heat islands
Opponents, many living in the neighboring Arden development, contend that their lives would be endangered by the low-frequency hum emitted by cooling systems, heat islands, in which the energy given off by data centers causes the surroundings to heat up, light pollution and potential harm to children at an elementary school about 1,250 feet away.
PBA Holdings’ “preliminary sound impact assessment” by international engineering firm Jacobs, didn’t offer methodology to support its conclusion that loud sounds would not reach Arden, said John Eubanks, attorney for Arden.
Eubanks questioned the county’s designation of data centers as “light industrial,” a theme echoed by many speakers, because, he argued, data centers harm neighbors and diminish energy and water supplies.
County policy defines light industrial as an operation “not likely to cause undesirable effects, danger or disturbance upon nearby areas. … These uses typically do not cause or result in the dissemination of dust, smoke, fumes, odor, noise, vibration, light or other potentially objectionable effects beyond the boundaries of the lot on which the use is conducted.”
The immense amounts of heat generated by the project could impact area waterways by accelerating algae growth, said Christina Reichert, senior attorney for Earthjustice, representing the Western Palm Beach Community Alliance. It’s a serious concern, she said, because the project sits at the intersection of two major canals at the headwaters to reservoirs and impoundments critical to Everglades restoration.
While residents argued the county needs to reclassify data centers as heavy industrial, Cox for PBA Holdings contended data centers meet the light industrial definition.
“It’s buildings full of computers,” Cox said in his closing remarks, drawing mocking laughter from the crowd. “It’s data and information processing as has been determined by the county. … We’re here today with the laws that exist today.”
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