Overview
- County commissioners voted 5–1 on Wednesday to deny without prejudice the developer’s application to expand Project Tango into a hyperscale AI data center, allowing the company to revise and resubmit later.
- The denial applies only to the new expansion request and leaves the property’s 2016 approvals for more than 2 million square feet of industrial and data-center development in place.
- Hundreds of residents and teachers packed a roughly 12-hour hearing with more than 80 public speakers who raised worries about water use, power demand, low-frequency noise, and the site’s proximity to Saddle View Elementary School.
- PBA Holdings touted roughly $500–$561 million in annual tax revenue and about 500 permanent jobs and said a closed-loop cooling system would use about 600,000 gallons of water, while opponents disputed those figures and said the project could need about 5,000 gallons of potable water per day.
- The fight reflects a broader wave of local pushback on hyperscale data centers and comes as Palm Beach County moves toward new rules and a temporary moratorium that could shape any future Project Tango filing.