WISCONSIN RAPIDS – A developer with plans for a potential data center in the city will be hosting a four-part webinar series about the proposed Wisconsin Rapids project.
According to a release PNK Group sent to a Daily Tribune reporter, the sessions will focus on specific topics and will address questions and feedback the group received from a community meeting earlier this month. PNK Group will address questions and feedback received at the meeting, through email and via social media, the release said.
Webinar details
How to sign up
Guests can register online for any or all of the webinars that will be held online via Zoom. Registration can be found at https://form.jotform.com/262186549788174.
What is the proposed project?
According to a conditional use permit application PNK Group filed at the end of April, initial plans included converting an existing 143,000-square-foot building on former paper mill land at 950 Fourth Ave. N. on the north side of the railroad tracks. Development would also add four new data center buildings on the 208.95 acres of land, taking up about 1.2 million square feet of the property.
Initial plans said it would use power from Consolidated Water Power Company at the local distribution and substation level and the American Transmission Company at the regional bulk transmission company and would not affect any electric services for homes, schools, hospitals and existing businesses in the city.
Following an initial fill of the proposed closed-loop cooling system, those initial plans estimated using about 10,000 gallons of water per day for the entire property.
What happened at the first community meeting?
The planned webinar series follows a public meeting PNK Group held Aug. 1 at McMillan Memorial Library. The meeting, originally scheduled to be held in the library’s 80-person All-Purpose Room was moved to the 248-person capacity theater and attracted a standing-room-only crowd.
Anton Voronkin, PNK Group’s chief development officer, and former New York City Mayor Eric Adams led the two-hour meeting, often met with boos, heckling and chants from those in the audience.
Voronkin told residents how the proposed Wisconsin Rapids data center facility would use “new technologies,” avoiding many of the issues and concerns people have with “old data centers,” although he said there were no other exact or similar facilities to show as an example. Voronkin said the group saw the problems and concerns people had around other data centers and aimed to make it better.
At the Aug. 1 meeting, Voronkin said PNK has potential tenants for the proposed facility but could not name them due to nondisclosure agreements with potential tenants until a lease is signed. At that meeting, Voronkin said the facility would create 50 to 150 permanent jobs, would not touch the Wisconsin River and would have no impact on local wells. He also said the group would release a configuration of the closed-loop cooling system planned for the proposed development.
What’s next?
The scheduled webinars are part of PNK Group’s process to determine if the developer wants to move forward with purchasing the property and starting construction. If and when PNK Group decides to move forward and completes a more thorough development plan to submit to the city, the city will then schedule a public hearing to discuss a conditional use permit.
After that public hearing, the city’s Planning Commission would vote to make a recommendation to the city’s Common Council for ultimate approval. The city will be held to provisions set in the state’s 2017 Wisconsin Act 67 that directs cities, villages, towns and counties how they can issue or deny conditional use permits.
“If an applicant for conditional use permit meets or agrees to meet all of the requirements and conditions specified in the city ordinance or imposed by the city zoning board, the city shall grant the conditional use permit,” Wisconsin Act 67 says.
Contact Caitlin at cshuda@usatodayco.com or follow her on Twitter @CaitlinShuda.
This article originally appeared on Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune: PNK Group plans webinars for potential data center in Wisconsin Rapids
Reporting by Caitlin Shuda, Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune / Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Caitlin Shuda, Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune | USA TODAY Network
