The City of St. Cloud is trying to write its data center rules before anyone proposes building one.
The St. Cloud Planning Commission holds a public hearing Tuesday evening at 6:00 at city hall on draft amendments to the Comprehensive Plan and Land Development Code that would, for the first time, define what a data center is in St. Cloud and specify where the largest ones could go.
The city itself is the applicant. In a September 1st memo, Community Development Director Matt Glaesman writes that the city’s current position leans on general industrial language and “a dated zoning definition with no specific site design standards.” Acting now, before a site-specific proposal lands, is “the best practice to establish appropriate standards based on community goals,” he writes.
The drafts split data centers into two categories. Enterprise or on-site facilities, the kind that have quietly operated inside businesses for years, are capped at 2,000 servers, 10,000 square feet and 50 megawatts of peak electrical use. Anything bigger is considered hyper-scale.
The St. Cloud Planning Commission plans to make a recommendation…
The Planning Commission would forward a recommendation to the city council, which holds its own public hearing before either document can be amended. Because the city is the applicant, either body can postpone action to gather more information.