The Towns Saying Yes to Data Centers Are Getting Specific

The towns still willing to take a data center are getting specific about it. They are naming the district, the megawatt limit, the lot size and the setback.

Records from the week to September 1 hold two answers to where a data center may be built. One answer picks a single district and closes the rest. Goochland County, Virginia is the clearest case. The other takes the use out of the code, as Fluvanna County, Virginia has done, or hands it to voters, as Defiance, Ohio is doing.

The first leaves a permit path open, with terms written down. The second closes it. The dividing line is whether the town has a place it wants the load to go.

Goochland keeps one district and shuts the others

On September 1 the Goochland County Board of Supervisors started two changes to its zoning rules. The first would amend Article 18 and Article 19 of the county code. Those are the county's light industrial and heavy industrial districts, called M-1 and M-2. The change says data centers are "not a permitted use outside of the Technology Overlay District." An overlay district is an extra set of rules laid on top of the normal zoning for one piece of the map. The second change would amend the overlay district and the county plan, modeled on changes the county made on November 6, 2025. The zoning amendments go to the Planning Commission for review.

Data centers have been allowed in M-1 and M-2 since 2014. The Planning Commission wrote on July 7 that the Board's goal is "to prohibit any data center that may seek to locate in the M1 or M2 districts."

The county did not say it wants fewer data centers. The record says the changes aim "to encourage economic development projects in the county's designated growth area."

Two things follow. Land in M-1 and M-2 outside the overlay loses a path it has held since 2014. Anyone who bought or optioned it on the old rules has to price it again. Inside the overlay the position improves, because the county is committing to that district in the same motion.

An 870-acre plan sits inside the district that stays open

County records show a plan already under review. VALCO2 Goochland County, LLC wants a special permit for a data center campus on 869.909 acres, named Tuckahoe Tech Park. The land is at 44 Cobblestone Circle and 70 Fleetwood Lane, bounded by Hockett Road on the west, Route 288 on the east and Patterson Avenue on the south.

Today that land is zoned for limited farming and homes. Section 15-450 of the county zoning code requires the special permit, and it is not automatic. The county reviews each project and can say no.

The county report confirms the land is inside the Technology Overlay District. A community meeting on July 23 drew about 600 people.

Fluvanna County deleted the use instead

Fluvanna County, Virginia took the other route on August 19. Its Board of Supervisors passed Resolution No. 25-2026 by a vote of 4 to 1, with Mr. O'Brien against.

The resolution does three things. It takes data centers off the list of uses allowed by special permit in the county's two industrial districts, I-1 and I-2. It says uses that are not listed in the zoning code are not allowed. And it bars the Board from taking any new data center permit until December 31, or an earlier date the Board sets. The draft said November 30. A related change would also delete the county's definition of a data center.

That is tighter than a pause, and it does not expire. Take the use off the list and the permit path is gone. Delete the definition and there is nothing left to apply for. Say that unlisted uses are not allowed, and a builder cannot argue that a data center fits some category already in the code.

Small server rooms were treated separately. Rooms that support another business on the same site went back to the Planning Commission for their own rules. One may still be allowed where a campus is not. At the same August 19 meeting, the Board accepted a utility easement from Amazon.com Services LLC.

Defiance, Ohio put a 25-megawatt ban on the ballot

Voters in Defiance, Ohio will settle the question on November 3. A citizen petition would add Section 1.12 to Article I of the city charter. The main line is short: "The construction of a data center is hereby prohibited." A data center means one or more buildings or facilities used mainly or only for digital information services, drawing more than 25 megawatts, "however derived from any energy source."

Two parts of that wording close common work-arounds. The buildings may sit on "a single real property parcel or on contiguous, adjacent, or otherwise aggregated real property parcels." So a campus cannot be split into smaller phases on separate lots. And "any energy source" covers power made on site, not just power drawn from the grid. The section is also self-executing, so it needs no later zoning change to work.

Of the 417 signatures turned in on August 5, the county board of elections found 270 valid. Rosa Escamilla, Lorelle Buntain and Jill Mack ran the petition.

A charter ban is a different risk from a pause or a zoning ban. The Council cannot undo it, and a future council cannot trade it away.

The Council is running a second track too. It cut its own pause on data center filings from twelve months to six, and that pause also covers "data storage, bitcoin mining, and cryptocurrency." Its Section 4 goes at the labeling problem directly. No one may win approval for a data center "by characterizing the proposed facility as another use." A project must be judged on "the actual nature, characteristics, and intended operation of the proposed use," not on the applicant's label alone. That answers projects filed as storage buildings or tech parks.

State law limits what a town can do

A town cannot always pick its answer. Staff in Cary, Holly Springs and Butner, North Carolina all made the same point. State law section 160D-107 lets a town pause new building. It does not let a town ban a lawful use. Of 22 North Carolina jurisdictions in the record, 17 moved to limit the use, almost all by pausing.

Cary took an 18-month pause to a public hearing on August 27. It covers data centers, crypto mining and any use tied to them, across a planning area that runs past the town limits. Cary staff gave the reason: the town's rules do not define the use at all.

Michigan officials say state law stops them from shutting the use out, so Michigan writes permit rules instead. The Michigan Townships Association, the trade group for the state's townships, has published a sample ordinance. It turned up in four county and township records in the same week.

The sample allows data centers only by special permit, and only in the industrial district. It bans evaporative cooling, the cheapest way to cool a big building. It also caps water use and power waste, and makes the site meet its own power needs without leaning on what the township already has. Cooling gear on a roof must sit 1,500 feet from the nearest lot line of a home, school, hospital, park or day care. On the ground, 1,000 feet. Those setbacks are measured to houses, which makes most rural Michigan industrial parcels unusable for a large project.

Florida shows a third pattern. Hillsborough County asked its lawyer to draft a pause on artificial intelligence data centers in the unincorporated county. It would not start until after October 1, 2027. A court striking down state Senate Bill 180 would start it sooner. The county also asked staff to look at limiting or banning county drinking water for cooling. That rule would sit outside the zoning code, where state limits usually do not reach.

The megawatt number decides who is in scope

The words "data center" are not what pull a project into these rules. The number is.

Savannah, Georgia set its trigger at 10 megawatts. That is the lowest in the record, and low enough to catch mid-size sites. Savannah paired it with a second rule, the first of its kind in the record. It bans turning a warehouse or large plant of 200,000 square feet or more into a data center. That closes the fastest route to a mid-size site in a port market. The shell is already up, and warehouse storage usually needs no special permit.

Defiance set its number at 25 megawatts. Greenville, North Carolina is working toward 10 to 50 megawatts for "Large" and above 50 for "Hyper-scale," with a special permit needed for both.

Some towns use floor area instead. Lake Isabella, Michigan has a draft that would ban anything above 10,000 square feet anywhere in the village. Smaller rooms would need a special permit in the industrial district. Two of its clauses are worth copying down. The ban reaches "any campus designed for phased expansion beyond ten thousand (10,000) square feet," which catches a small first building meant to grow. And a campus means two or more buildings "located upon one or more contiguous parcels operating as a coordinated facility," which closes the lot-splitting route.

Irondale, Alabama would write three sets of permit rules, for micro, medium and hyperscale data centers. The numbers that split the three are not in the published record.

Some places are writing rules that allow it

Austin, Texas took up a resolution on August 27 to start changes to Title 25 of its city code, the land development code. The changes would create data center land uses, set site rules and set a review process. A written path with published standards is easier to plan around than no rules at all.

Texas landed on both sides in one week. Seguin and Schertz each have amendments that would add data centers to their land use tables with a special permit. Victoria talked about a short pause. Saint Michael, Minnesota would go further. It would allow the use in its I-1 industrial district subject to standards, with no hearing at which the city can say no.

What a permit now requires

Pennsylvania had 31 jurisdictions in the record. Only 3 moved to limit the use; 21 moved to define or allow it. Bucks County reviewed three township ordinances on September 2, each creating a data center use class with its own numbers.

Bedminster Township would make the sides facing a street or a home look like an office, behind an eight-foot berm. It would require sound studies by an acoustic engineer before and after building. Then it would make the applicant post money to guarantee the noise levels promised beforehand are met. The noise limit becomes a bond, not an argument at a hearing. Buildings over 50 megawatts would also have to buy at least 10 percent of their power from renewable generation.

East Rockhill Township would allow the use by special permit in its two industrial districts. The lot must be at least 50 acres. Buildings cap out at 35 feet. Setbacks run 400 feet from every property line and 500 feet where the neighbor is a home. Noise caps at 50 decibels next to homes and 62 decibels elsewhere, with a study before building and another every three months after. The 50-acre floor and the setbacks price small sites out of the township.

East Rockhill also wants proof the power is there: a will-serve letter from the utility, or a sufficiency assessment by a certified professional. A will-serve letter is a written statement from the power company saying it can serve the site. Asking for it up front puts the grid question ahead of the zoning approval. The third ordinance, in Richland Township, folds crypto mining, blockchain work and server farms into the same class as a data center.

Perryville, Missouri took its data center rules to a final vote on September 1. Two new fire safety standards went with them, for computer gear and telecom buildings. Perryville regulates data centers under its business license rules as well as its zoning, so an operator needs both. The rules also keep the use inside the city's industrial park, set 500 feet of space from homes and day care, and ban evaporative cooling.

One Perryville condition reaches outside land use. An applicant must produce a written letter of support from the local school board. That gives a body with no land use role a veto over a private project. A builder can appeal a planning vote, but not a letter the board never writes.

What is still unsettled

Goochland has not adopted anything. The Board only started the process on September 1, and the VALCO2 filing was still being checked for completeness.

Defiance voters have not voted, and the city's own six-month pause is only at first reading.

Fluvanna's resolution passed. The hearing on the zoning text change was set for September 2, with no published result yet. Its rules for small server rooms do not exist yet. Savannah had a hearing and a vote set the same day. How long its pause runs is not stated.

Tulsa, Oklahoma is the first place in the record where someone asked out of a pause. T20 Mining Group, LLC, through the law firm GableGotwals, asked the City Council to except two lots on South 129th East Avenue from Ordinance No. 25764. That ordinance lets the Council grant an exception "for good cause shown." The Council has not ruled.

Nobody agrees yet on whether crypto mining is the same use. A Nebraska operator told Keya Paha County commissioners on August 11 that "Bitcoin is not a data center, it is essentially a load center. Bitcoin doesn't collect any data, just uses power." Cary, Defiance, Richland Township and Lake Isabella are all writing the opposite view into their rules.

The last open item is time. Minutes trail meetings by weeks. Check every date and number with the town first.