Meta, the parent company of Facebook, wants to build and operate a $700 million data center in Rosemount, but some residents are worried as a city council vote looms.

The council will vote on the final site and building plan approval Thursday night. Some residents have expressed concerns about the environmental impacts and a lack of transparency from city officials due to a nondisclosure agreement and previous secrecy regarding the project, which was code named Project Bigfoot.

“You signed a nondisclosure agreement with the buyer, which essentially shut the public that elected you out of the conversation,” said one Lakeville resident at the Dec. 5 city council meeting.

Rosemount Mayor Jeff Weisensel has said code names are used to keep growth plans of large companies private to avoid impacting stock prices or informing competitors.

The data center would be used to store computing and networking equipment “for the purpose of collecting, storing, processing, distributing, or allowing access to large amounts of data,” according to a filing submitted to the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission by Xcel Energy, the data center’s electricity supplier.

The project is expected to bring in 1,000 construction jobs and support at least 50 on-site jobs to run the data center.

If approved, the data center is to be constructed on a 280-acre parcel of UMore Park near County Road 42 and Dakota County Technical College.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, is trying to build a data center on a 280-acre parcel of UMore Park in Rosemount. Approval for the project will be decided Dec. 21, 2023 by the Rosemount City Council. (Courtesy of the University of Minnesota Board of Regents)

Owned by the University of Minnesota, UMore Park spans 4,772 acres and was used as a munitions plant during World War II. The university’s Board of Regents approved the 280-acre sale to Jimnist LLC, a subsidiary of Meta, in September and the sale is expected to close in January.

Julie Barner, a resident of Inver Grove Heights, said she is worried about the water usage from the proposed data center as well as a population of Blanding’s turtles that she said has a habitat at UMore Park.

The Blanding’s turtle was classified as a threatened species in Minnesota in 1984 and has been documented in the vicinity of UMore Park, according to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.

The city has budgeted for the facility’s water usage, which is expected to be “on par with what a few dine-in restaurants or half of what a 100-room hotel would use on an average basis,” according to the site plan from the Nov. 28 Planning Commission meeting.

The site plan also emphasizes that the data center would not qualify as a Significant Industrial User that has the potential to impact publicly owned treatment works.

Thursday’s meeting will also include an update on UMore Park’s Alternative Urban Areawide Review. The AUAR was first conducted for the area in 2013 and is updated every five years, with its most recent update published on Dec. 1.

The AUAR is a hybrid of the environmental assessment worksheet and an environmental impact statement and is currently open to public comment.

The city council meeting begins at 7 p.m. Thursday at Rosemount City Hall.

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