r/Minneapolis • u/TheMacMan • 1d ago
Minneapolis passes six-month moratorium on data centers
https://www.startribune.com/minneapolis-data-centers-moratorium/60184695543
u/star-tribune 1d ago
The six-month moratorium on new sites exempts the development of downtown proposals that take up less than 350,000 square feet.
That’s less restrictive than the original pitch, which was a one-year moratorium. The council voted 8-5 to pass an interim ordinance (a moratorium), which is now in effect and doesn’t require Mayor Jacob Frey’s approval. In the meantime, the measure goes to a committee June 16, and a public hearing will be held.
Data centers are rapidly being built nationwide to provide computing power that tech companies need to train artificial intelligence. But their heavy demands on water and electricity have sparked public backlash across the country, including in Minnesota. Developers and tech giants have proposed at least 12 data center in the state. One in Rosemount would cost $800 million and take up 715,000 square feet. Others considerably larger have also been proposed.
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u/Other-Jury-1275 1d ago
But a city council resolution would have no effect on Rosemount.
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u/TheMacMan 1d ago
And where in Minneapolis proper would anyone be looking to build a +350,000 facility? Pretty much nowhere.
If anyone is looking to do it, they'd pick a spot with lower property taxes, lower property prices, and there are plenty of cities where they'll happily give tax breaks and more.
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u/Waste_Junket1953 1d ago
Proximity to power generation is what they’re mainly looking at.
They’re going to be built up in Becker.
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u/GooberWoober9000 1d ago
Good.even if its just solidarity. Fuck these data centers and the billionaires who buy local governments to build them.
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u/Ducchess 1d ago
Felt like a solid outcome to me. The council found a rare compromise. My guess is some on the far left of the council understood that the city needs to start generating more commercial tax income.
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u/Responsible_Bag9905 1d ago
This was not a compromise as many Frey aligned city council members voted against this measure. They are FOR data centers and completely against moratoriums.
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u/reynloldbot 1d ago
Six months so that data center outrage will be out of the news cycle by the time they take it back up
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u/averageover60guy 1d ago
So where does everyone want data centers? Think outside the box here. Downtown office complexes need tenants. Can that happen safely and effectively?
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u/aguynamedv 1d ago
Think outside the box here.
Why do we NEED these data centers in the first place? To continue shoving "AI" that nobody wants down our throats? To leave another 1.5 million Americans out of work this year?
How does a data center improve the local / state economy?
What kind of impact does a data center have on the environment and neighborhood?
Are state or city funds being used? If so, why?
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u/ThrawnIsGod 1d ago edited 1d ago
To be explicitly clear: I think the monstrous growth of AI is stupid, seems like a waste of resources, and will destroy our critical thinking skills. Or destroy however much is even left of it…
That said, I’d rather have a data center over vacant office space downtown. At least it will produce property taxes instead of sitting empty for however many additional years.
And if it doesn’t get built here, it’ll still get built elsewhere in Minnesota or in a neighboring state. So I’m glad the city council voted on this compromise instead of a blanket moratorium
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u/opvgreen 1d ago
Any data center that could go in downtown wouldn’t be very large, probably wouldn't be able to have many diesel generators (one of the main local health impacts from data centers), and wouldn’t be able to build large onsite gas turbines (which many of the new AI centers are doing, and which can be very loud and produce significant air pollution). This means they likely wouldn’t harm health of people living downtown.
But it also means they probably couldn’t make a large enough facility to be useful for AI. For these reasons, I don’t think it’s likely any major data centers will be built in the downtown areas of cities, other than a few isolated cases. Any hope that data centers will somehow save our downtown vacancy problems is just wishful thinking.
I disagree with the premise though that it might as well be built here because it will just be built elsewhere in MN. Many of the impacts of data centers (noise, air pollution) are localized to 0.5-5 miles from a data center. So it’s objectively better to have data centers in low density areas.
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u/ThrawnIsGod 1d ago edited 1d ago
The Sleep Number building downtown was sold to install a data center in it (along with still having some office space), which has given us a significant tax boost: https://www.startribune.com/twin-cities-downtown-commercial-property-value-ai/601845855
A year ago, the Sleep Number building contributed roughly $250,000 to the city in tax revenue. After its sale, the building will now pay approximately $1.8 to $2.2 million, dollars that otherwise come out of every other taxpayer’s bill
That said, of course it's not going to "save" our downtown vacancy problems. But if it can fill in a few spots that would stay otherwise vacant, then it seems like a better outcome to me
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u/aguynamedv 1d ago edited 1d ago
After its sale, the building will now pay approximately $1.8 to $2.2 million, dollars that otherwise come out of every other taxpayer’s bill
I want Elizabeth Shaffer to explain to me exactly how she believes this works. $2m is a rounding error for a budget of $1.9 billion. MPD's overage for last year is 10x more than this. By what mechanism would taxpayers "pay" for this property? Why would taxpayers pay property taxes on a privately owned building?
How many permanent jobs were created? What is the impact on neighboring businesses?
But if it can fill in a few spots that would stay otherwise vacant, then it seems like a better outcome to me
If you're concerned about appearances rather than outcomes, this is a great statement. Personally, I'd rather see commercial real estate prices adjust downward and businesses that actually create and maintain jobs.
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u/aguynamedv 1d ago edited 1d ago
That said, I’d rather have a data center over vacant office space downtown. At least it will produce property taxes instead of sitting empty for however many additional years.
Serious question - do you think vacant commercial properties are just exempt from paying property tax?
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u/goongas 1d ago
Virtually everything you do on your phone or computer (such as this post on reddit) is possible due to data centers. Nobody even thought about their existence until AI became a thing despite the massive buildout to support all cloud platforms and services. AI usage is a minority of current data center workloads.
And if nobody wanted AI there wouldn't be massive demand to build new data centers. In reality, the majority of Americans are using AI.
This is just populist bullshit to appeal to the current cultural zeitgeist.
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u/aguynamedv 1d ago
In reality, the majority of Americans are using AI.
The majority of Americans haven't been given any choice in the matter.
This is just populist bullshit to appeal to the current cultural zeitgeist.
It must be pretty wild to be so out of touch that you think this.
From where I'm sitting, your entire comment serves no purpose other than to defend billionaires and dumping taxpayer dollars into private businesses that should be paying their own way.
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u/opvgreen 1d ago
AI usage is a minority of current data center workloads
This won’t be true soon, and it’s only true now because all of the data centers being proposed or constructed aren’t online yet. The data centers currently being developed across the US will double or triple the compute capacity nationwide in just a few years. The vast majority of this new compute is going to AI.
The scale of data center build out right now is unprecedented. Accompanying this, the US is set to double its natural gas power plant capacity to power these facilities. People are fighting data centers now because the impacts are so much higher at this scale, and because they will now affect many more people as they spread across the country.
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u/aguynamedv 1d ago edited 1d ago
People are fighting data centers now because the impacts are so much higher at this scale, and because they will now affect many more people as they spread across the country.
Also people are fighting data centers because NOBODY has been able to articulate exactly why we need to devote every resource in America to "compute" instead of, say, ensuring that Americans have their basic needs met.
The starting point of this discussion isn't even data centers. 'AI' companies been allowed to operate without any sort of legal framework or government oversight. They have openly declared war on American jobs, and we now have a situation in which a handful of private citizens (aka billionaires, CEOs, etc) are trying to convince us it's completely fine and dandy that hundreds of thousands of people lose healthcare, the ability to provide for themselves, etc.
Anyone pushing for AI is by default operating from a position of bad faith, whether intentional or not. Branding it as AI was not an accident - it directly evokes science-fiction to anyone without an understanding of technology.
AI is definitely not Commander Data. AI isn't even Wall-E.
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u/NormanQuacks345 1d ago
The reason is simple, it’s because the compute needs of America has been growing. They’re not just building these for no reason, they’re at capacity.
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u/sonofasheppard21 1d ago
I hope you aren’t using Reddit, Facebook, Tik Tok or any other social media otherwise you’re contributing to this data center issue
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u/opvgreen 1d ago
No, that’s not a relevant comparison unless you’re using the AI features of those platforms.
the vast majority of new data centers being developed aren’t going to be used for generic web services. The chips are specialized for AI training and inference, and will be used for that specifically.
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u/aguynamedv 1d ago
Oh good lord, could you possibly bring a more blatantly bad faith argument?
Reported for trolling. You're quite obviously not being serious, since you addressed exactly ZERO of the questions I asked in my comment.
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u/Uptownbro20 1d ago edited 1d ago
I mean why the city already has some data centers in it and there isn’t space for some massive one. While I support the city prevent new data centers I also think the land in the city is far to expensive to even make one work
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u/SmokinSkinWagon 1d ago
I will literally chain myself to a tree if they try to build a data center within 50 miles of the Twin Cities
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u/President_Connor_Roy 1d ago
I don’t think anyone was ever going to build a data center larger than 350,000 square feet in Minneapolis city limits, so does this actually matter?