Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud and Microsoft are all pushing to expand their data center footprints and offer even more cloud availability zones to meet rising demand. But at least in the U.S., they’re increasingly running into a patchwork of municipal zoning rules and restrictions that will impact the location and look of their new builds.
Silverlinings took a closer look at how three key locales are dealing with data center design to boost economic development while also balancing the concerns of residents.
1. New Albany, Ohio
New Albany is one of several emerging data center hubs. Located just outside the state capital of Columbus, the town is already home to data centers from AWS, Google and Facebook. Though Amazon hasn’t confirmed any plans to expand further in New Albany specifically, the company recent bought upwards of 400 acres of land there and earlier this week announced it will spend $7.8 billion over the coming years to expand its data center footprint in central Ohio.
Jennifer Chrysler, New Albany’s director of community development, told Silverlinings that it doesn’t have specific regulations for data centers but instead lumps them in with other commercial office buildings permitted in its sprawling business park in the municipality’s strategic plan. The city added data centers to the plan in a 2014 update.
“Data centers are a permitted use in our commercial zoning districts,” she said by email. “Overall, we have strict design and landscape standards for every commercial development in the business park…For our community, good planning and design is a foundation for all development projects.”
The town’s strategic plan calls for commercial buildings to include “heavy landscaping” to provide a buffer for residential areas; conceal mechanical operations using architectural screens or landscaping; and use mixed materials, colors and textures to break up the monotony of large-scale facades.
2. Chandler, Arizona
Phoenix is another hotbed of data center activity. That’s why Chandler made headlines when the metro-area town implemented new rules restricting data center development and noise earlier this year.
Chandler’s Planning Administrator Kevin Mayo told Silverlinings the changes were prompted by the evolution of data centers over the past decade. While they used to be single-use proprietary entities, they’ve increasingly become multi-tenant facilities that have grown exponentially in size, he said. In Arizona especially, these buildings require extremely large HVAC systems for cooling, and they also require “huge banks” of diesel-powered generators to ensure backup power is available if the electrical grid goes down.
“There isn’t lots of space between uses anymore,” Mayo said of Chandler’s land use. “Our data centers on Price Road are fairly close to homes and we were beginning to get concerns with noise. They’re not necessarily really loud, [but] it’s a certain humming frequency that is generated by them with the HVAC systems.” That humming, combined with the noise made by the diesel generators when fired up for routine maintenance, prompted the zoning code amendment, he said.
Mayo explained the amendment essentially codified mitigation tactics Chandler was already working on with large data center providers. These included things like quiet HVAC rules, the use of sound blankets and sound attenuating screen walls and the requirement that data centers do their own community outreach to field residential complaints. The latter rule is meant to remove city officials as the middleman in communications, Mayo explained.
According to Mayo, a number of other municipalities have contacted Chandler to find out how the city got to the point of adding new rules and how the regulations have been working.
Unlike many other municipalities, Mayo said Chandler isn’t looking to recruit new data centers. Instead, it’s just trying to find better ways to coexist with the ones already there.
3. Prince William County, Virginia
Prince William County is a growing focal point near the global data center capital that is Northern Virginia. As of April 2022, the county was home to 33 existing data centers with another 13 under construction. Though that’s still just a fraction of the 115+ located in neighboring Loudoun County, Prince William is looking to boost that number in part to increase tax revenue.
The county created a Data Center Overlay district in 2016, which promoted development of data centers in parts of the county already equipped with the infrastructure needed to support such a use case. Of the 33 aforementioned data centers, 29 were located in the Overlay district as of April 2022.
Late last year, Prince William County amended its Comprehensive Plan to add a new Digital Gateway Zone, with specific rules and regulations for new data center developments. These include policies that encourage visually interesting exterior designs as well as screening and landscaping for data centers that are “visible from incompatible uses” like residential areas, require screening for rooftop and ground level equipment, and enforce noise regulations that limit output to 55 dBA during the day evening.
In February, county officials extended the noise restriction to all 24 hours of the day for data centers build new residential areas in response to citizen concerns.
Want to learn more about cloud data centers? Watch our Cloud Data Center Strategies virtual event on-demand today.