A controversial plan to build a massive data center in Coachella appears dead after the city council unanimously voted Thursday, June 4, to cancel its development contract with the company it had hired months ago to build the center.
The council also voted to institute a 45-day moratorium on data center development and instructed city staff to craft language to vote on within that time frame that would institute a permanent ban on construction of data centers in the city.
Those votes came at the end of another lengthy meeting – the second in about a week related to the data center issue – that saw dozens of people come out to express vehement disapproval to efforts by the city to enlist Stronghold Power Systems Inc. to build a data center campus.
That campus was to be built on agricultural land near the intersection of Fillmore Street and Avenue 52. It was to be a focal point of what had been pitched to the council as a larger plan to fund the buildout of electrical infrastructure that would open up the northeastern swath of the city to development. As part of the process, Stronghold was to find a company or other user that would operate the data center.
“It is 8:54 and we don’t have much more to discuss,” Mayor Frank Figueroa said after two hours of public comments as the council began a short discussion about adopting the moratorium. “People have already told us what they want to do… I think we’ve heard from people that they want the 45-day urgency ordinance that initiates the moratorium but also they want the long-term ban and ensuring this topic will not come back, right, and making sure our community is protected.”
The vote represented a notable about-face for the four councilmembers, who all voted earlier this year to approve the contract between the city and Stronghold Power Systems, Inc. that they then voted to cancel Thursday night.
The data center plans started to gain significant community attention in April when a video criticizing the proposed campus and outlining alleged harms data centers would pose to the community went viral on social media. Mounting criticism and increasingly organized opposition soon followed, leading to a tense town hall on the subject last month.
That opposition reached a crescendo ahead of last week’s council meeting, which saw a crowd of hundreds of people gather outside city hall and ended with the councilmembers saying they would support a moratorium on data centers in Coachella.
Coachella mayor vows to rebuild trust
The council also unanimously voted Thursday to instruct city staff to research and write ordinances that would adopt new regulations and standards dealing with air quality, water and electricity usage and industrial development near schools. That move was first proposed by Councilmember Denise Delgado, who was often called out by public commentors during the meeting who accused her of trying to stall the moratorium.
“There’s a lot of folks that I heard are disappointed in me and all I can do is try to do better,” Delgado said at the end of the discussion. “That’s all I can do. I hope this builds some trust back in the community.”
Figueroa also addressed the issue of enduring and even growing distrust among Coachella residents toward the city’s leaders.
The community uproar over the data center started less than a month after the city’s longtime Mayor Steven Hernandez resigned from office after pleading guilty to a felony conflict of interest charge relating to misconduct as mayor. Figueroa was later appointed to the mayor position, leaving a vacancy on the council that has yet to be filled. The city had also been without a permanent city manager for a period after Gabriel Martin was fired from the role by the council last year with no reason given. The council last month hired Gustavo Romo, most recently the deputy city manager in Beaumont, to the position.
“I think what we need to move forward is to ensure that we see these residents here today and ensure that the leadership that we portray to people is rebuilt and entrusted,” said Figueroa. “Because at this point, anything comes out of our mouth is question and asked. And so until we rebuild that trust, we have to go out there and prove to the community that we are here for them.”
The vote came one day after the city council in Coachella’s western neighborhood, Indio, also voted to institute a similar 45-day moratorium on data center development and just days after the Southern California city of Monterey Park became the first in the nation where residents voted to ban data centers.
Marco Martinez, an attorney from the city’s law firm, advised the council that it was important that it follow existing legal standards and precedents for banning a land use, which involve clearly demonstrating the harm that land use would present to the city’s residents.
“The courts look at them (land use bans) very closely,” said Martinez. “So we want to make sure we do this right.”
The city’s contract with Stronghold dealt with not only the development of the proposed data center campus but also electrical infrastructure that would be needed to power it.
That power was to ultimately be provided through a new utility that the city was to operate with Stronghold and which the city had envisioned would provide power to development that would go beyond the data center, although Stronghold’s efforts were to initially be focused on building out the infrastructure to support the data center.
It was not immediately clear if the city would now pursue building out power infrastructure in the eastern section of the city through other means, or even how it could do so. The contract with Stronghold allowed both the city and the company to terminate it within the first year without owing anything to the other party. There did not appear to be any Stronghold representatives present at Thursday’s meeting, a situation that was mentioned by several residents in their public comments.
Prior to the vote to terminate the city’s contract with Stronghold, City Councilmember Stephanie Virgen said she was not interested in considering any options for moving forward on the previously agreed upon partnership with Stronghold to operate a new municipal electrical utility, even if it could not be done without a data center being involved. That larger partnership was terminated along with the rest of the contract.
Virgen said she was angry that Stronghold had apparently sent messages to several residents Thursday which included a statement from Indian Wells Mayor Toper Taylor urging residents to support the data center proposal.
“I don’t think we can go back and try to find a different avenue with them at this point,” Virgen said.
City to reevaluate relationship with law firm
During the marathon of public commenters, a mix of Coachella residents and people from other valley cities and beyond brought up a range of concerns about everything from negative health and environmental impacts they said data centers could pose to concerns some had that the data center could be used to power “mass surveillance.”
Many also questioned why the same councilmembers had initially voted to greenlight the development of the data center and questioned whether they had done their due diligence. Several also criticized city staff members, including the law firm that advises the city and provides its city attorney, and former interim city manager Bill Pattison Jr. for recommending that the city approve the contract with Stronghold.
The councilmembers did not address the questions of why they had voted for the contract in the first place. However, Virgen called for the council to discuss the representation provided by the city’s law firm, Best, Best & Krieger. The city’s acting city manager, Lincoln Bogard, said an agenda item for that discussion would be added to the agenda for the next city council meeting.
Just before the last vote to terminate the contract, Figueroa also offered a rebuke of Indian Wells’ mayor, who had become a rare prominent public voice to express support for the data center plan in a forcefully worded editorial published in The Desert Sun earlier in the week.
“The mayor of Indian Wells owns his own AI company,” Figueroa said. “So maybe you should just build it in Indian Wells.”
Paul Albani-Burgio covers growth, development and business in the Coachella Valley. Email him at paul.albani-burgio@desertsun.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: In major about-face, Coachella to ban data centers after public outcry
Reporting by Paul Albani-Burgio, Palm Springs Desert Sun / Palm Springs Desert Sun
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Paul Albani-Burgio, Palm Springs Desert Sun | USA TODAY Network
