In a City Commission meeting that lasted over four hours on July 6, commissioners received an update on the drafted ordinance that would enact a 12-month moratorium on data centers and large load customers. The public was also given its first opportunity to comment on the proposed moratorium.
Here's what happened
- City Attorney Palmer Davis informed the commission of a change to the timeline for a vote on the proposed ordinance — the first official public hearing will now occur on July 20 at 9 a.m., followed by a second hearing and vote on August 3. Meetings are open to the public and streamed live on the Lakeland Government Network.
- The developer behind “Project Swan,” Tyler Lohmiller of Ryan Companies, spoke during public comment. “It’s not an AI data center. What we’re looking at is a cloud data storage edge facility, so if it was fully built out, about 500,000 square feet, which would be roughly 100 megawatts of power,” he said.
- 19 other members of the public spoke in opposition to the project and most were in support of a moratorium; however, a few felt a moratorium would not go far enough and called for an all-out ban on data centers in Lakeland.
- The data center continues to be a unifying issue, drawing criticism from people on both sides of the political spectrum, with comments from both Sam Romain, chairman of the Polk County Republican Party, and Spike Poma, steering committee chair for the Polk County Democratic Socialists of America.
- This meeting gave city staff and commissioners the opportunity to share what they know, what they don’t know, and ask questions about the impact of data centers and ramifications of the potential moratorium.
Why the change in timeline?
State statutes require municipalities give 10 days notice of a public hearing “in a newspaper of general circulation in the municipality.”
USA TODAY Co. (formerly Gannett), The Ledger’s parent company, did not publish the city’s public notice of the meeting in time. “Our office and the city clerk’s office sent a notice to the paper to run the legal ad,” Davis said. “For whatever reason, that legal ad did not get run.”
Despite the change to the timeline, Davis recommended that the commission “go ahead and open this up to public hearing today. This has already received a lot of publicity. People are here to talk about it.”
Public comments
Mayor Sara Roberts McCarley agreed, “This is an investigative process that we’re doing with public input and with subject matter experts.”
“There are a lot of different pieces to this puzzle,” McCarley said, “and you’re paying attention, which we are so grateful for that civic engagement, because we’re only as good as how our community is engaged, and so this dialogue is critically important.”
After a discussion between commissioners and city staff, 20 members of the public stepped up to speak, including Tyler Lohmiller, who spoke on behalf of the “Project Swan” developer.
“We’re not looking for handouts,” Lohmiller said. “We’re not looking for really anything. We’re here to play. We’re here to partner with the city of Lakeland.”
The other 19 speakers were in opposition to the project and in support of a moratorium; however, several felt a moratorium would not go far enough and called for an all-out ban on data centers in Lakeland.
Mike Schmidt, a former member of the Polk County Planning Commission who said his company was formerly consulting engineers for Lakeland Electric, commended the commission for considering a moratorium.
“This allows time to hire — and this is my suggestion — an independent consultant, a professional process engineering firm, who understands the process engineering of a data center. It is very complex, and you need to be advised properly by a professional,” Schmidt said.
Understanding the moratorium
Davis described the moratorium as a “belt and suspenders approach.” He said the city’s land development code already prohibits data centers. “If a use is not listed in the land development code, it is presumed to not be allowed,” said Chuck Barmby, city transportation and development review manager.
Davis noted that the moratorium goes beyond just data centers and would also prohibit large load customers using 50 megawatts of electricity or more per month.
He said that if approved as it is, the ordinance addresses his concern about the state’s broad definition of a “data center.”
“If you look at the definition of a data center under state law, it covers a lot of things that we probably see routine for any business,” Davis said. He said the moratorium addresses that issue by creating exceptions for routine business operations, distinguishing them from principal operations that serve offsite, third-party users.
“The way we’ve got it worded now, it’s any data center, whether it’s 50 megawatts monthly peak load or not,” Davis said. “It’s really just a question of is that data center serving offsite users, or is it serving a business that’s using it for the businesses’ purposes?”
Davis noted that the moratorium would prohibit any existing data centers from being “intensified or expanded” and prohibits the city from rezoning or issuing building permits for this type of customer.
While the moratorium is in effect, city water and electric utilities will not provide service for a data center or large load customer, which could affect city utility customers beyond city limits, Davis clarified.
Defining a data center
“Because we don’t have a definition of this use in land development code, it does give us time to figure out exactly what we’re dealing with, what we’re talking about here, and understand the nuances of the large-scale data centers, which has gotten a lot of press,” Barmby said.
Commissioner Ashley Troutman asked about existing facilities that might be considered data centers and how they could have been approved if the land code does not allow them. Barmby explained that the facilities Troutman was referring to could have been built for another purpose.
“The two or three data centers we have today, that would be classified as data centers, generate very little demand for water or electric, so they are not the use that is a big concern to the public,” Barmby said.
Director of Community and Economic Development Brian Rewis said, “One of the frustrations I think that we have all shared through this process is the seeming blanket with which data center terminology is used to cover everything from a closet with a couple of servers in it all the way up to the four-and-a-half-million-square-foot hyperscale facility that’s proposed for Fort Meade, and everything in between.”
“If nothing else, hopefully through this process we can come to a simple agreed-upon definition and framework for exactly what it is we’re talking about, but that also addresses appropriately the concerns that we all have for our utility grid and water natural resources,” he said.
Rewis said Cologix is probably the most well known facility that might be considered an existing data center.
“We actually confirmed those usages after the press got interested in Cologix and confirmed that their electricity usage is seven tenths of 1% of the large load customer peak definition that the state of Florida has now adopted,” Rewis said. “Where water usage is concerned, at 21,000 gallons per month, it is scantily higher than some single family residences.”
Is a data center feasible?
Commissioner Terry Coney asked Barmby to explain the design review process. Barmby said that when the city receives a concept plan like “Project Swan,” the first step is a review by the city’s development review team to assess “utility demand needs, what are the potential transportation needs, landscaping requirements, zoning and land use requirements, other things on the very, very front end of the process, even before we start to see a formal application for a land use or a zoning action.”
He said at the time that “Project Swan” came to the public’s attention during the concept review phase, developers had submitted a request for the city to annex additional land outside city limits for the project, but no request for land use or zoning had been made.
“That process is meant to inform our staff, but also to inform applicants who are considering the feasibility of a particular project on a particular site, and gets them the earliest, most meaningful, actionable comments and questions that they can use then to inform their decision,” Rewis said.
Commissioner Stephanie Madden suggested involving representatives from Lakeland Electric, Southwest Florida Water Management District, and Polk Regional Water Collective in future discussions.
“To go over 50 megawatts, do we even have that generational capacity?” Madden asked. ”This is a huge consideration, not just because there’s public comment and concerns, it’s whether or not it’s even feasible, physically possible, scientifically, mathematically.”
Anna Toms is a reporter for LkldNow, a nonprofit newsroom providing independent local news for Lakeland. Read at LkldNow.com.
