Residents slam Star Tribune plant data center plans

A proposal to turn the defunct Minnesota Star Tribune printing plant, one of the few remaining industrial sites in downtown Minneapolis, into a data center has become a contentious and defining issue in the neighborhood.

The Minnesota Design Center and the North Loop Neighborhood Association on Saturday reviewed three sessions of community input collected at a series of workshops last week from more than a thousand Minneapolis residents.

And the first public presentation about the developer’s plans for the site met strong public opposition Wednesday night. Hundreds of residents spilled out the doors of the North Loop Neighborhood Association’s meeting room, across the street from the plant.

Local hostility to the plan mirrors rising public skepticism of data centers in Minnesota and around the country as some centers have driven up local utility bills and tech companies have signed secret agreements with cities about future projects.

The developer, Virginia-based Legacy Investing, has already signed a purchase agreement for the property with the Star Tribune and submitted a conditional use permit application to the City of Minneapolis.

The city will decide whether the project moves forward. Data centers have been top-of-mind for city leadership, and the Minneapolis City Council is in the process of updating its zoning rules for the centers.

Legacy Investing does not need the neighborhood association to sign on to the project, but Wednesday evening, two representatives of Legacy Investing attempted to get public buy-in at the neighborhood’s planning and zoning committee meeting.

“We understand how important this is to the community, and we are excited to truthfully work with and collaborate with you to reinvent this portion of the North Loop that we know is so important to this entire constituency,” Ari Chernikoff, vice president of development for the company, said.

Chernikoff and his colleague, Daniel English, pitched what they describe as a small, 20-megawatt, data center that they say wouldn’t strain the local energy grid or use more water than “two to four residential homes worth of water consumption.” That’s a lot less than nearby commercial buildings, Chernikoff said.

Legacy Investing would buy the plant and some land around it. Chernikoff said the data center would be an economic boon to the city, but also “provides an economic engine for these adjacent parcels to allow them to be developed into whatever the city sees as its highest and best use.”

However, scant public details are available about Legacy Investing’s plans for the 13-acre site.

Fernando Burga, senior research fellow with the Minnesota Design Center, facilitated the discussions over the last week and spoke to the crowd of more than 50 people on Saturday. Over 1,140 comments were collected on concerns and ideas for alternative plans for the former Star Tribune publishing plant.

“We considered next steps moving forward through developing other actions, including an engagement hub that will continue the efforts of mobilizing interest around this topic,” Burga said, adding that the design center staff would compile and analyze the input and release its findings next month.

Minneapolis City Council Member Michael Rainville, who represents Ward 3 covering the North Loop neighborhood, was also at the meeting, but told the crowd he couldn’t speak on the potential data center project because city council may need to vote on the issue in the near future.

Jo Vos, co-chair of the neighborhood planning and zoning committee, said Wednesday she requested more details about the proposal and didn’t receive them ahead of the meeting. Typically, she said, developers have given her committee more information.

“We’ve usually always gotten enough information to make a decision on,” Vos said.

The developers say it’s too early to know which company will make use of the data center. They didn’t present numbers on how much revenue their development would give to the city and they didn’t estimate the number of jobs created.

The skepticism from the public and the committee members was palpable in the room.

“I’ve worked in a data center in the past. These do not create real jobs,” said North Loop resident Jared Olson. “The construction jobs are transient. Any project there would create construction jobs.”

Burga said the speed of the project is “highly suspect from a development perspective.”

“I’m impressed and surprised by the lack of preparation,” Burga said, going on to say if Chernikoff and English were his students he’d give their presentation a D minus.

The developers, who have also developed a 30-watt data center in the Sleep Number building in downtown Minneapolis, said they would work to share more information with the committee.

“Daniel and I are standing in front of you today because this is important to us, right?” Chernikoff said, earning laughs because the developers were video calling into the meeting.

Committee Co-Chair Vos said she supports any plan that preserves the Star Tribune building and emphasizes mixed-use development of the property around it.

However, Vos said the committee didn’t have enough information to decide whether to support the data center plan. “We’re kind of like in limbo,” she said.

Ultimately, the committee decided to write a letter capturing the unusual public energy at their meeting, requesting more details from Legacy Investing, and requesting the city slow down its permit approval process for the project.

The full board of the North Loop association meets at 6 p.m. Aug. 26. They’ll decide whether to agree with the planning and zoning committee’s letter asking the developer for more information and asking the city to delay the project by a month.

Matt Bruns, a North Loop association zoning committee member and board member, said “barring some massive amount of data and their plan being complete in the next week” he can’t imagine the board will have enough information to decide if it supports the plan.

Either way, the meeting is sure to be packed.