Proposed data center in Farmington sparks resident pushback

Denise May’s backyard is a slice of tranquility in Farmington, a gathering place for wild turkeys and deer that flows into a verdant golf course.

It’s the quiet she loves. But she’s worried she might lose it.

May lives about 400 feet from the site of a proposed data center — buildings that house hardware for the storage and dissemination of digital information.

Farmington Technology Park would, if constructed, join a string of such facilities cropping up on the edges of the Twin Cities metro, from Rosemount to Chaska to Becker. This would be the first one in Farmington, a southern suburb ringed with farms and home to nearly 24,000 people.

“It just does not belong here,” May said.

The project’s future depends on an upcoming City Council vote. Members will decide Nov. 4 whether to approve a petition to rezone about 340 acres — the land on which the center could sit — from an assortment of uses to mixed-use commercial industrial. Data centers are permitted under that designation.

The rezoning is just one step in a long list of necessary approvals before construction could begin. But the vote punctuates several months of controversy.

Since May, many residents have raised alarms about the proposal. Members of the Environmental Coalition of Farmington MN have packed council chambers, arguing that a sprawling data center could generate an irritating hum, consume finite water resources and spoil the city’s neighborhood feel.

City officials and a development executive dispute that. They say a lengthy set of guidelines will govern the project, including standards intended to muffle noise. And they point to the hundreds of jobs and millions in tax revenue the project could spur.

“It’s going to bring positive benefits that the city’s been looking for,” said Graham Williams, the chief investment officer at Tract, the Colorado-based developer.

Many details at this point remain unknown. Neither the city nor Tract has announced the client that will use the proposed center.

For that reason, officials can’t provide information about its exact layout. More details, they add, will emerge once the site plan process begins.

Tract is one of many data center developers that have come in recent years to Minnesota, where a cooler climate slashes energy costs. What these companies often find is this: next-door neighbors who won’t welcome them with open arms.

Across the suburbs, residents have often met proposed data center projects with skepticism, anxiety and outright opposition.

In Rosemount, neighbors’ concerns about water and electricity use didn’t stop officials from greenlighting a vast Meta data center near Dakota County Technical College.

In Chaska, a recent City Council meeting stretched for hours as attendees enumerated their objections to a proposed facility on roughly 70 acres in the West Creek Corporate Center. Members talked about ways of mitigating environmental concerns before voting Oct. 21 to approve a preliminary site plan.

The Farmington project remains in the preliminary stages. Williams of Tract said the development company plans to spend between $50 million and $100 million over the next two to three years to prime the land for construction.

A representative site plan, subject to change, offers a sense of its scope: up to 12 data center buildings comprising roughly 2.5-million square feet. Some structures could be as tall as 80 feet. Those closer to residents’ homes would rise a maximum 50 feet.

Some of the land they would occupy is the Fountain Valley Golf Club, which a local couple has owned for 30 years. The rest is property the Farmington school district owns. Williams said those sales haven’t yet closed, though Tract has both properties under contract, city documents state.

May said she learned about the project about four months ago — when a letter landed in her mailbox inviting her to a public hearing about the rezoning.

Her concerns have only crystallized since then.

She said she worries a vast data center campus could slash her home’s value. She’s concerned that the water such facilities require might strain infrastructure. Then there’s the noise. In Loudoun County, Va., a locus of data centers, whirring fans and humming HVAC units have kept residents up at night.

Farmington Planning Manager Tony Wippler and Community and Economic Director Deanna Kuennen have fielded similar concerns from residents.

Kuennen said she understands their “fear of the unknown.” But she maintained there’s a logic behind the location. Tract set its sights on these parcels because they’re near sources of power, she said.

As for the noise, Kuennen pointed to certain sweeping standards — which City Council will also vote to on Nov. 4 — that the developer proposed to minimize unwanted sounds. They include a thick buffer encircling most of the site and a several-hundred-foot berth between buildings and homes.

Wippler noted a study ensuring a client meets state noise standards will occur, too. And Williams, the Tract executive, said part of the reason the development company buys large parcels is so generators can be clustered in the middle, creating a natural sound buffer.

On the water concerns, Wippler said the project will draw on city infrastructure. Kuennen added that estimates of additional water required are “pretty minimal.”

She also said that it’s difficult to predict a data center’s impact on property values. Unforeseen events such as a recession could destabilize the market writ large, she added.

Kuennen and Wippler touted the project’s potential benefits. It could create up to 275 permanent jobs and generate millions in tax revenue. Williams noted that well-known data center clients such as Meta and Google often invest in local schools.

Such economic advantages piqued Dakota County Commissioner Bill Droste’s interest in data centers about a decade ago. At the time, Facebook was building a massive, then mysterious facility in Altoona, Iowa. Others across the state’s suburbs swiftly followed.

Droste watched those projects generate jobs and surrounding development. He wondered why there weren’t more in Minnesota.

“I saw the great economic benefits of data centers,” said Droste, who supported Meta’s bid to build one in Rosemount, where he served as mayor for over two decades.

Those Iowa facilities have become a flashpoint in Farmington, offering a glimpse of what could come.

Farmington Planning Commissioner Dirk Rotty visited several of them, and said at a September meeting that he couldn’t hear any noise. (Rotty voted with his colleagues to recommend approval of the rezoning.)

May, the resident, also stopped by the Iowa facilities. At one of them, a huge distance separated homes from the main campus, she recalled. But the closer she got, the more unmistakable the noise became.

“You’re hearing the humming,” she said. “And it definitely was there.”