CBS News reports…

The old Star Tribune printing plant is a big part of that conversation. Legacy Investing, based in Arlington, Virginia, which also converted the Sleep Number building into a data center, agreed to purchase the 13-acre printing site.

“The thing I’m thinking about is the people in that neighborhood, and how do they most benefit from a potential development,” said Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey.

Frey says there is an opportunity if done right. The comments Friday come as the city deals with a multimillion-dollar budget shortfall, while its tax base isn’t what it once was.

“I believe they need to be regulated. We need to make sure that we’re ensuring livability and health and safety for our communities,” he said. “Simultaneously, we should work to make sure that they can help drive down the taxes for everybody else.”

Frey says one of the key goals is making sure data center buildings do not become the sole use of the property, but rather a space the community can enjoy, such as a restaurant or event space.

MPR reports…

A proposal to turn the defunct Minnesota Star Tribune printing plant, one of the few remaining industrial sites in downtown Minneapolis, into a data center has become a contentious and defining issue in the neighborhood.

The Minnesota Design Center and the North Loop Neighborhood Association on Saturday reviewed three sessions of community input collected at a series of workshops last week from more than a thousand Minneapolis residents.

And the first public presentation about the developer’s plans for the site met strong public opposition Wednesday night. Hundreds of residents spilled out the doors of the North Loop Neighborhood Association’s meeting room, across the street from the plant.

Local hostility to the plan mirrors rising public skepticism of data centers in Minnesota and around the country as some centers have driven up local utility bills and tech companies have signed secret agreements with cities about future projects.

The developer, Virginia-based Legacy Investing, has already signed a purchase agreement for the property with the Star Tribune and submitted a conditional use permit application to the City of Minneapolis.

The city will decide whether the project moves forward. Data centers have been top-of-mind for city leadership, and the Minneapolis City Council is in the process of updating its zoning rules for the centers.

Legacy Investing does not need the neighborhood association to sign on to the project, but Wednesday evening, two representatives of Legacy Investing attempted to get public buy-in at the neighborhood’s planning and zoning committee meeting.

Here’s what the planners shared…

Chernikoff and his colleague, Daniel English, pitched what they describe as a small, 20-megawatt, data center that they say wouldn’t strain the local energy grid or use more water than “two to four residential homes worth of water consumption.” That’s a lot less than nearby commercial buildings, Chernikoff said.

Legacy Investing would buy the plant and some land around it. Chernikoff said the data center would be an economic boon to the city, but also “provides an economic engine for these adjacent parcels to allow them to be developed into whatever the city sees as its highest and best use.”

One possible result of the meeting…

The full board of the North Loop association meets at 6 p.m. Aug. 26. They’ll decide whether to agree with the planning and zoning committee’s letter asking the developer for more information and asking the city to delay the project by a month.

The Minnesota Star Tribune reports…

Google has scaled back its plans for a proposed data center campus in Northeast Minnesota in response to community concerns, the tech giant said this week.

The initial 1.8 million square-foot campus planned for Hermantown is now expected to be 1.66 million square feet, shrinking from four data center buildings to three, reducing the amount of disturbed wetlands and land.

The project, kept secret by city officials for a year, has fueled enormous pushback in this town of 10,000 near Duluth. Since it was revealed as a data center last year through a Minnesota Star Tribune public records request, the project has generated a lawsuit, and inspired political candidates and a highly organized grassroots opposition group protesting everything from tax subsidies to nondisclosure agreements.

“We’ve been listening,” Google representative Tyler Huebner said at a Monday Hermantown City Council meeting.

MPR reports…

Staffers with tech giant Google turned on the charm and put in some face time in Minnesota this week, as the company tried to smooth over some ruffled feathers and win over naysayers in two small towns where it hopes to build massive data centers.

Wednesday evening Google hosted what it called a community celebration in Pine Island, about 20 minutes northwest of Rochester, with free food, live music and family activities.

Meanwhile, 200 miles to the north in Hermantown, just outside Duluth, Google hosted an open house to answer questions from area residents about the hyperscale data center it wants to build there.

The event in Pine Island was pretty laid back as people gobbled up the free food and kids jumped in bouncy houses, a sharp contrast to the Hermantown meeting, where data center opponents disrupted Google’s presentation and several of them were escorted out by police.

The meetings come as Google faces some uncertainty with both projects. In Hermantown, where the project still needs city council approval, the proposal is facing intensified opposition after recordings were leaked of senior Hermantown officials mocking data center opponents.

The Pine Island data center project is also now on hold, even though city officials have signed off on it while a judge considers the merits of a lawsuit seeking a more thorough environmental review.

KAAL TV reports…

Freeborn County is putting off data center development for another year as officials work on rules for how those projects could be regulated.

The Freeborn County Board of Commissioners approved an extension of its data center moratorium following a public hearing on August 18.

The original moratorium was approved on August 19, 2025, and stopped the county from accepting, processing or approving permits for data centers in the unincorporated parts of Freeborn County.

The new resolution extends that moratorium through August 19, 2027.

The county says its current regulations aren’t enough to address the specific impacts of data centers and that allowing the moratorium to expire could threaten public safety and the orderly development of the county.

The McLeod County Chronicle reports…

Plans for a new Revolve Labs data center in Glencoe are moving forward, but questions surrounding noise, water use, the project’s location, and its long-term impact on the community continue to follow the development.
Those concerns have surfaced as Revolve Labs prepares for a new data center technology campus that will include up to approximately 80,000 square feet of building space and represent an initial investment of at least $459.9 million.
The Glencoe City Council approved a development agreement with Revolve Labs July 20. The agreement describes the project as an opportunity to expand the city’s tax base, create employment and business opportunities, and bring infrastructure improvements to the community.
But as the city and Revolve Labs move forward with an investment approaching half a billion dollars, uncertainty remains over some of the most basic information surrounding the company’s presence in Glencoe.
Questions about Revolve Labs’ familiarity with the community have emerged over details that would seem almost impossible for a company already operating in the city not to know: Where is its existing facility, and where will its new one be located? Yet Revolve Labs has provided conflicting information about both.

On a high level those questions focus on:

• Info the company
• Noise
• Water use
• What Glencoe gains

I mentioned the data center meetings in Minneapolis’ North Loop earlier, today MPR talks more about the meetings led by the Minnesota Design Center. They heard about how the first meeting went last night (Aug 18)…

MARY BINKLEY: It was a really nice exercise that Dr. Burga and his colleagues from the U had US go through. There were giant maps of the North Loop at several tables, and they asked us to plot where in the North Loop, where are the things that we love about the North Loop, what do we think is missing, and what are the concerns about data centers.

And as I was looking at what people put on their Post-It notes, I learned that people really, really value the green space that we have in the North Loop along the Mississippi River as well as our small business community. This is a community that has everybody’s favorite restaurants and coffee shops and gyms and retailers, and that definitely came out in the feedback on the maps that we saw last night. It was a good exercise.

And a little bit on the agenda for the next meeting (Aug 20)…

FERNANDO BURGA: Certainly. Because we have to understand what is important for the community to be able to guide the work. So we start by understanding exactly how the community sees itself. What are the values, locations, histories that define the community.

From there, we move into a more systematic way to understanding impacts, which is what we’re going to be doing today. Today we’re going to be focusing on the question of data center impacts. And similarly to the maps, we have a series of tools that have been developed by our researchers here at the Minnesota Design Center to continue the process of collecting information and understanding the hopes, the dreams, the stories that define essentially how people see themselves, how they see their community impacted, and how they see the region impacted.

These tools are going to be geared around issues related to water, energy, economy, society, family, neighborhood, and also neighborhoods, people that live in other places that may enjoy coming to the North Loop. So we’re aiming to develop essentially an archive, also a system of information that we can then look at, and then on Thursday, we’re going to be considering alternatives. What are the ways that we can think about moving forward? Based on tomorrow’s presentation, we’re going to be able to develop that workshop, and then on Saturday we’re going to have a final share out with the community about next steps.

They also talk about the difference between rural and urban conversations about data centers…

FERNANDO BURGA: So the main similarity is that there’s deep concern and confusion about data centers coming to people’s communities. There is a lack of information, transparency. There is misinformation. People do not know what they don’t know. People feel paralyzed.

In many ways, each community is different and unique. We’re finding that specific communities across rural Minnesota are developing alternatives that include thinking about the design and the placement of buildings, for example. Some of them are in complete opposition, and this is a very divisive topic, one which is really affecting people emotionally and mentally also.

Through our work in empowering small Minnesota communities’ partnership with University of Minnesota Extension, we are considering these questions, and we are developing essentially a set of engagement, models, kits, tools but also developing the research and the questions that allow us then to move forward proactively and work with a community like the North Loop Neighbors Association in the North Loop that is open and available to be able to have this type of conversation with the public.

The Duluth News Tribune reports on incidents and issues that arose in Hermantown…

City officials apologized Monday night for disparaging comments about opponents of a proposed Google data center.

But that did little to alleviate the anger of community members, who turned out to condemn the leaked audio remarks and again take a stand against the 1.66-million-square-foot project in the southwest corner of the city.

Some results…

Mayor Wayne Boucher, Police Chief Jim Crace and City Administrator John Mulder all addressed the public at the start of the meeting.

A Google representative also announced the company was mutually agreeing to terminate all nondisclosure agreements with city officials “in the spirit of openness and partnership.”

The Duluth Monitor last week reported on recordings of an internal staff meeting from June in which leaders were heard talking about community members who addressed the council.

And an update on the data center in question…

Tyler Huebner, a Google representative, provided a brief update with updated designs. He said the facility’s footprint has been reduced slightly and will include three data center buildings, three mechanical buildings, a two-story office building and a fire-suppression building.