I wrote about the possibility in October but St Paul Pioneer Press reports on the update…

Farmington is on its way to being the home of a sprawling $5 billion data center park following a recent vote by the Farmington City Council that came as a disappointment to some residents.

The Farmington City Council recently approved a final plat and final planned unit development for Tract, a data center development company, to build up to 12 data centers across some 340 acres.

Denver-based Tract plans to build the Farmington Technology Park at the Fountain Valley Golf Club property at 2830 W. 220th St. and two nearby properties that were annexed into the city of Farmington from Castle Rock Township and are now owned by Independent School District 192, according to city documents.

Here are some of the objections…

Residents like Cathy Johnson who live near the property where the data centers are to be located have been making their presence and their negative feelings about the project known.

A Facebook group called Environmental Coalition of Farmington Minnesota has garnered more than 250 members with the goal of objecting to the data center park.

Johnson, who is part of the group, said she has concerns about electrical usage, water usage and potential sound pollution from the data centers.

“Noise is a major issue with data centers; it’s not so much the decibels, it’s a whirring hum that the fans make,” Johnson said.

Another concern of residents who live in the area is the proximity of the technology park to existing neighborhoods.

“I’ll look out my bay window and it’ll be right there,” Johnson said, referring to the 250-foot setback outlined in the proposal.