Farmington is on its way to being the home of a sprawling $5 billion data center park following a recent vote by the Farmington City Council that came as a disappointment to some residents.

The Farmington City Council recently approved a final plat and final planned unit development for Tract, a data center development company, to build up to 12 data centers across some 340 acres.

Denver-based Tract plans to build the Farmington Technology Park at the Fountain Valley Golf Club property at 2830 W. 220th St. and two nearby properties that were annexed into the city of Farmington from Castle Rock Township and are now owned by Independent School District 192, according to city documents.

Tract, a data center developer, is interested in some 343 acres of land in Dakota County to construct the Farmington Technology Park, which could include up to 12 data centers. (Courtesy of Tract)

The parcels, located near the intersection of Minnesota 50/220th Street West and Minnesota 3/Chippendale Avenue West, were rezoned last month from a variety of uses to mixed-use commercial industrial, which allows data centers.

The current site plan includes up to 12 data center buildings spanning more than 2.5 million square feet and two administrative buildings, according to city documents.

“We expect the buildings and infrastructure will approach $5 billion at full build and the investment into servers, graphics processing units and network gear deployed inside the data centers will represent many multiples of that,” said Julia Kendall, vice president of marketing for Tract, in an email.

The recent plat approval, which is contingent on a development contract between Tract and the city, was not a unanimous decision.

Community pushback

“This decision today has tormented me for the past two weeks,” said city council member Steve Wilson at the Nov. 18 meeting; Wilson was the sole vote against the project.

“Whatever we do here is gonna be the standard for whatever we do in the future,” Wilson said. “We should really slow this down.”

Residents like Cathy Johnson who live near the property where the data centers are to be located have been making their presence and their negative feelings about the project known.

A Facebook group called Environmental Coalition of Farmington Minnesota has garnered more than 250 members with the goal of objecting to the data center park.

Johnson, who is part of the group, said she has concerns about electrical usage, water usage and potential sound pollution from the data centers.

“Noise is a major issue with data centers; it’s not so much the decibels, it’s a whirring hum that the fans make,” Johnson said.

Another concern of residents who live in the area is the proximity of the technology park to existing neighborhoods.

“I’ll look out my bay window and it’ll be right there,” Johnson said, referring to the 250-foot setback outlined in the proposal.

“Whether people want to believe it or accept it or not, these decisions are not easy and they are not taken lightly,” said Farmington Mayor Joshua Hoyt. “Part of the commitment that you make to this seat is even if it is in your backyard, you have to make this decision with the majority of the community.”

Next steps

Next, the city council must approve a development contract with Tract, said Tony Wippler, planning manager for Farmington, in an email.

The city is currently working through the details of the contract and Wippler expects it will go before the council before the end of the year.

Should all come to fruition, there could be a single end-user for the data center park or multiple users, Kendall said.

The full buildout of the data center park is expected to take five to 10 years to complete and “we anticipate site work starting in 2026,” Kendall said.

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