“We want an ordinance to protect us,” one audience member shouted.
Others held signs that said “NO DATA CENTER” and many wore red in support of the cause. As the crowd’s interjections became more frequent, Mayor Lloyd Hilgart banged his gavel.
“If people aren’t going to let us speak, then I’m going to recess,” he said, ultimately declaring a break.
Just a few years ago, neither cities nor residents had much reason to think about data centers. The facilities have operated at a small scale across the state for decades, often treated like warehouses or light industry.
But as AI fuels a data center boom, Minnesota cities face a seemingly exponential number of development proposals without much state regulatory guidance. And residents’ concern over the large facilities and their societal effects are rising just as fast. The charged debate touches on everything from energy and water use to noise and legal risk.
City officials are caught in the middle.
Some, such as Bloomington and Golden Valley, have passed zoning ordinances to set rules on location, noise and size. Others, including Eagan, Carver and this week, New Brighton, have chosen one-year pauses on new data centers to study their impacts.
State-level regulation promoted by environmental groups and DFLers has struggled to advance.
“At some point we need to know where the ultimate authority lies, and I don’t feel like I know that at this point,” said Laurie Halverson, chair of the Dakota County Board. That board recently discussed the issue despite the county’s limited role in zoning, acknowledging residents seem to have similar frustrations.
Many cities across the metro allow data centers in much the same way they allow warehouses or manufacturing.
That approach is beginning to shift as data centers have gotten bigger — and as worries around them have grown, with pitched fights over large-scale data centers in Rosemount and Farmington.
Bloomington passed data center zoning language in 2022, after concerns about the expansion of a Verizon Wireless data center on Bush Lake Road, where neighborhoods line two sides of that property.
Planning Manager Nick Johnson said residents “were hearing this constant humming of the chillers at this facility,” particularly in winter months.
Now, data centers greater than 10,000 square feet are allowed by permit in certain industrial areas of Bloomington, provided they are not within 500 feet of residential areas.
Data center proposals are also causing consternation in Hermantown, where Google is planning a massive project, and Nobles County.
Matthew McLure, a partner at Ballard Spahr who focuses on land-use issues, said cities seem to approach data center regulations with differing goals: limiting the facilities or finding ways to welcome data centers, with some guardrails, to boost economic development.
During the Dakota County Board meeting, Commissioner Bill Droste, whose district includes the large Meta data center under construction in Rosemount, said he’s afraid Minnesota, and Dakota County, could miss out on economic growth if it’s overly stringent with regulations.
“Our growth as a region is going to not change if we continue to be alarmed on any water usage,” he said, noting data centers have become increasingly efficient.
Beyond Minnesota, opposition to data centers has taken different forms.
A Milwaukee suburb became the first city in the country to require voters’ approval to offer incentives to data center developers, Politico reported. Residents of at least three other U.S. cities are pursuing similar efforts.
Last year, Minnesota legislators struck a deal for new regulations on data centers, preserving tax breaks for the developments but requiring them to consider energy provisions, and water conservation at certain consumption levels.
This year, environmentalists and some DFLers are supporting several data center bills, including a statewide two-year moratorium, additional environmental review and permitting, a repeal of tax credits, state zoning requirements, and a ban on local governments signing nondisclosure agreements.
So far, the nondisclosure idea seems to be gaining the most traction.
Monticello started getting inquiries from data center developers in 2024, said City Administrator Rachel Leonard, something she attributes to the city’s access to water and transmission lines, as well as open land.
Now the city is discussing two proposals: A 3 million-square-foot facility on a 550-acre site south of town, not far from residential areas, and 1.3 million-square-foot facility on 106 acres west of town, near the Bertram Chain of Lakes Regional Park. Neither site is within city limits but both are in areas it plans to annex.
The City Council’s posture toward data centers has been driven by interest in economic development and diversifying the tax base, Leonard said — but also in mitigating risks to the community.
Under the proposed ordinance, Monticello would create data center zoning districts with special approval processes. To build a data center, developers would need to hit certain benchmarks, including a size ratio of the building relative to the land. They also would have to prove to the city’s satisfaction that a project could fulfill its water and energy needs.
Much of the hourslong discussion that took place April 13 centered on the required distance between data center properties and residential areas, currently 200 feet. The council could vote on the ordinance at its next meeting, April 27.
Representatives of the two projects did not respond to requests for comment for this report.
Council Member Kip Christianson said Monticello has the power to write strong rules for data centers. He said not having more specific data center language could expose Monticello to legal risk.
“This is the best data center ordinance you’re going to find,” he said, crediting staff members for helping draw “bright lines around what we want and what we don’t want.”
The city is one of several facing a lawsuit from the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy over the environmental review process for the bigger data center project, with lawyers alleging the city used a type of review that’s too general.
Joy Anderson, the advocacy group’s supervising attorney, also had concerns about the zoning ordinance under discussion in Monticello and whether it goes far enough.
“If you can check off all the boxes in this ordinance, then you can get your data center, whether or not the community wants it,” she said.
The crowd at the council meeting didn’t seem swayed either. Some said they felt that the city wasn’t listening to them.
Resident Andy Sopher said he’d like to see the city pass a moratorium on data center development as it seeks to learn more about their potential effects.
“It’s going to affect a lot of people, so getting more time to do more research, to make actual, educated decisions instead of shooting from the hip, it’s imperative,” he said.
©2026 The Minnesota Star Tribune, Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC
