Data center ordinance awaits Board action
By Randy Bell
More than three months after Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced a $1 billion data center investment in Clinton, a proposed City ordinance to deal with any similar facilities in the future has been drafted, but the Board of Aldermen has not yet discussed the proposal or voted on it.
In May, the Board approved changes to Clinton’s existing zoning ordinance to specify that data centers may be allowed only as a conditional use in industrial areas of the city. That means that any data center proposal would have to come before the Planning Commission for a public hearing before the Board could vote on it.
Director of Community Development Roy Edwards says the separate data center ordinance would focus on a number of issues.
“Buffers, screening, setbacks and things like that they can use for future data centers,” he says. “We want to make sure that we’re ready and that we have the guidelines in place, so that we’re not arbitrary with the rules.”
If passed, the new ordinance would not be retroactive to the AWS project, but the data center will have to adhere to previous restrictions including the zoning and noise ordinances.
Edwards points out that the draft is just a starting point for the Board to consider.
“If they would rather put stricter rules on it, then they can.”
Mayor Will Purdie anticipates action on the ordinance soon.
“That would be something I would think the Board would take up in the relatively near future.”
And Purdie expects that changes could be made in the ordinance before the vote is taken.
“I think we’ll look to see what other communities have put in to help protect residents and certainly draw from that, then brainstorm and put our own ideas in there, as well.”
The mayor believes that, even though the new ordinance won’t apply to the AWS data center, the public shouldn’t be concerned.
“Based on the design of that facility, I think, with the current ordinances in place, we have ample protection for our residents.”
Purdie says it would be pure speculation to discuss the possibility of another data center coming to Clinton.
“I can’t speak to whether somebody will want to come here or not,” he says. “To build something from scratch on the scale of what you’re seeing in other counties, I don’t know that we even have the spot to do that.”
Instead of constructing the AWS data center from the ground up, the company is taking a unique approach, retrofitting the old Delphi-Packard Electric plant in the Clinton Industrial Park in order to move quickly to have the first phase of the project completed around the middle of next year.
