Minneapolis weighs new data center limits

Minneapolis is poised to enact sweeping new data center regulations that, as a six-month moratorium on data center construction, is set to expire this month. Fox 9's Emily Pofall is live at City Hall. And so Emily, the word of the day inside the council chambers was compromise. Yeah, it was so half the council wants an all out ban saying that the midterms last week were largely a referendum on data centers all together. The other half of the council is looking at downtown Minneapolis is high vacancy rate and sees this as part of the solution. What the council came up with was this list of regulations that are likely to pass this week. Here's what's on the table right now. Data centers can only be built downtown or in the North Loop. According to these new regulations, they can only go in existing buildings, size would be capped at 150,000 square feet, and companies would have to disclose energy and water use. And to put this in context, the city says that right now there are eight data centers serving tech companies downtown at this point. Thank you very much. Council members today said that Xcel Energy told them there is interest in up to eight more projects down here. So like I said, half the council wants an all out ban, the other half doesn't. What happened today was largely a compromise. A complete ban on data centers is tone deaf. Tone deaf to the benefit to our labor, skilled labor. to our residents' increased property tax burden. And tone deaf to the revenue problem that we have right here in our city. What we're talking about is actually the tone deaf proposal. It's very clear that our residents do not want to see this in their neighborhoods, in their communities, and in our city. The council passed a six month moratorium on any new data center construction earlier this year. That moratorium is set to expire November 21st. And if these regulations don't pass, that means data centers will be able to move back in here with little oversight. The city council is set to take up that vote on Thursday. And I'm told by a mayor spokesperson, if the council sticks to what was discussed today, the mayor will support it.