Ahead of further meetings this month, a local citizens group calling itself the “San Angelo Data Center Citizen Coalition” released a statement calling for city and commercial planners to apply the hand brake on their projects for further studies and public transparency to run its course.
In their statement released Thursday afternoon, the group wrote “We are not opposing technology or economic development…we are calling for a pause to be sure decisions of this scale are made with full information, sound planning, and meaningful public participation.”
Two topics of upmost concern, they say, are infrastructure strain and housing impacts, worrying that rapid immediate demand for short-term housing would lead to increased need amongst residents and higher rents.
Both issues were discussed brief by officials with Emergent Data Centers when they appeared at the San Angelo Economic Summit earlier this year.
At that time, Emergent Chief Technology Officer Mike Coleman said that project managers expect at least 3,000-5,000 people to be working on the site daily until it’s completed, and stated that while actual construction might provide some local jobs, but the bulk of electrical and mechanical engineers needed for the project would most likely come from elsewhere.
To meet this demand, he stated “We would have to come in and build housing.”
Emergent Data Centers appears to be a new company with little information available online, with significant capital to invest, as their business model is to build and then eventually lease facilities to data management companies, like Skybox Data Systems, who only run the actual data systems inside.
Officials described Emergent’s role as essentially “a landlord” for the data companies,” and said that cities where Emergent has built placed many demands on the facilities and the company, which he says they’re happy to comply with.
The citizen group’s warning also arrives after potential regulations for data centers were tabled at last month’s planning commission meeting, where participants were quoted worrying that landscaping requirements would be too restrictive for future developers.
Meetings will be held this month to discuss the data center issue, with City Council scheduled to hold a joint meeting with the planning commission on April 21 at 8:30 a.m., followed by a general public meeting at McNease convention center with officials from Skybox and Emergent Data Centers where the public can submit their question in writing ahead of time. That meeting is scheduled for April 22 at 5:30 p.m.
Editor’s Note: In the interest of full disclosure, the author of the citizen coalition’s statement has published columns and letters to the editor in The Concho Observer.
