A burgeoning appetite for ever more AI, cloud computing, and 24/7 internet connectivity is driving the demand for more data centers across the country. Yet data center developers with their sights on the City of Eagan should look elsewhere — at least for the next year. 

The City Council has unanimously passed a data center interim ordinance, a first of its kind in Minnesota. “We want to understand as fully as we can the implications of the new generation of data centers,” said Mayor Mike Maguire during the Feb. 17 meeting. “The size and scope of [these] data centers are giving the Council pause.” This moratorium stipulates that no new data center may be located in Eagan within 500 feet of residential homes or use more than 20 megawatts of electricity through Feb. 17, 2027, unless the Council lifts the moratorium earlier. 

In the meantime, City staff will conduct a study of data centers, which store, process, manage, distribute, and protect data. The study will include long-term infrastructure impacts; use of resources, including energy and water; noise produced by data centers; changing design standards; and how future data centers fit within Eagan’s zoning framework.

Following the study, “Community Development, along with any consultants, will make recommendations to Council regarding reasonable restrictions on the operation of data centers within Eagan,” explained Dianne Miller, city administrator.

Eagan's Current Data Centers

Eagan will soon have four data centers, all of which were approved prior to the moratorium. The former Unisys site (3199 Pilot Knob Rd.) has an enterprise data center, which supported Unisys operations. The new property owner has indicated its intention to continue operation of the existing data center. The 90,000-square foot DataBank data center (3255 Neil Armstrong Blvd.) opened in Eagan back in 2015. It’s a colocation data center, which means that it houses multiple clients and is served by various network providers.

Opening this summer is another colocation data center, owned by Boston-based Centra, at the former Thomson Reuters’ dedicated data center (610 Opperman Dr.). Dubbed MSP1, this 100,000-square-foot, 12 MW carrier-neutral facility is scheduled to open by late summer and will primarily serve as a signal booster for networks of clients, among them, Minnesota-based broadband and telecommunications provider Arvig.

Eagan’s fourth data center, owned by Excelsior-based Oppidan, will serve as an industry edge data center, again working as a signal booster for its tenant network. Construction is underway, and this 61,554-square foot, single-story 5MW data center (3621 Argenta Trl.) will likely be occupied and operational this fall.

Both Centra and Oppidan say their facilities are designed to be energy and water efficient.