Following months of mounting tension, Palm Beach County commissioners voted to deny a controversial expansion for Project Tango, officially blocking plans for a massive hyperscale data center near Loxahatchee's Arden neighborhood.
The final decision came after a high-stakes, marathon 12-hour hearing that drew massive crowds — requiring overflow rooms to accommodate the public — and drew intense responses that forced officers to escort a few residents out of the Robert Weisman Governmental Center.
The decisive 5-1 vote, with Commissioner Maria Marino as the lone yes vote, effectively halts the proposed 3.6-million-square-foot hyperscale artificial intelligence data center campus slated for the western part of the county.
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Commissioner Maria Sachs said no expert from the Project Tango team was able to compare and contrast the other 120 data centers that exist in Florida to the Project Tango proposal, which led to her decision.
"This is important to me in making my decision," she said. "You can’t tell me how high that mountain is until you scale it.”
Vice Mayor Marci Woodward said the development wasn't "compatible" with the county's comprehensive plan and required too many conditions and guardrails just to get approved.
Prepared to "take the slings and arrows," Commissioner Marino supported the project, noting the developer agreed to all county conditions to protect the nearby Arden neighborhood and Saddle View Elementary School.
Only six of the seven county commissioners voted, after District 6 Commissioner Sara Baxter, the county mayor who represents the district where Project Tango would have been located, recused herself. The move came after she publicly opposed the AI data center project beforehand, which violated rules requiring commissioners to remain unbiased until after the official hearing.
The decision directly aligns with a prior unanimous recommendation for denial from the county’s Zoning Commission. It marks a major victory for local community groups, residents, and school advocates who packed the commission chambers and overflow areas in protest.
The proposed 202 acre site is located at 20125 Southern Boulevard (State Road 80) in western Palm Beach County. The property directly borders the Arden community and sits roughly 900 to 1,200 feet from Saddle View Elementary School, a close proximity that fueled intense public pushback from residents across the county.
PBA Holdings, the developer, requested a total of nearly 3.6 million square feet of development. This layout allocates 2.35 million square feet for warehouses, 1.03 million square feet for an AI data center, and 216,000 square feet for supporting utility structures.
The project would have required 600 employees to work at the data center, 200 each on three shifts.
Under a 2016 county approval, the developers already have the legal right to build 1.2 million square feet of warehouses and a 206,000-square-foot data center on the site.
Wednesday's vote was not about stopping construction entirely, but rather deciding whether to allow an amendment that expands the project into a massive 3.5 million-square-foot hyperscale AI campus.
Regulatory conflict, zoning reversal
Under Florida’s Senate Bill 484, any data center drawing 50 megawatts (MW) or more faces strict regulatory hurdles and public hearings. Project Tango was projected to draw a massive 600 MW, a footprint 12 times the state's regulatory threshold.
On July 2, the Palm Beach County Zoning Commission broke with planning staff's initial recommendation and voted unanimously (6–0) to urge county commissioners to deny the project.
The board argued that while standard cloud data centers technically fall under "light industrial" zoning, a hyperscale AI campus operates more like a "heavy industrial" facility due to its unprecedented power draw and massive noise footprint.
Just days prior to this decision, the Board of County Commissioners voted 5–2 to freeze all new data center applications countywide while they draft appropriate regulations for this emerging asset class. However, because Project Tango's application was filed before the moratorium was enacted, it was legally permitted to undergo this final review.
In an effort to win approval, developer PBA Holdings had significantly revised its master development plan. The changes included scaling back the proposed AI data center by over 40% (a 760,000-square-foot reduction) and offsetting the cut by adding nearly 450,000 square feet of warehouse space alongside 216,000 square feet for support utilities.
While the developer also proposed fast-tracking the project by consolidating the construction timeline from four phases down to two, promising neighboring residents a shorter, though temporarily more intense, building window, the concessions were ultimately not enough to sway the commission.
Key concerns: water, sound and safety
Discrepancies remained regarding utility impacts.
Developers claimed their closed-loop cooling system would require 100,000 gallons of potable water daily, and plans featured a massive 20,000-square-foot water treatment plant.
During testimony, University of Toronto water expert Dr. Christopher Ollson assured the public that any drained cooling water would be safely contained and treated in strict compliance with Florida regulations, emphasizing it would contain "no PFAS." Often referred to as "forever chemicals," PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are linked are linked to health risks, like cancer.
However, environmental resource questions persisted among skeptics.
To address noise concerns, the developer said it would shift louder equipment away from neighbors, move cooling systems indoors, and proposed 216,000 square feet of utility structures as sound buffers.
Their own studies claim low-frequency hums from the data center would remain safely below the 60–65 dBC threshold for sleep disturbance.
An independent review by Dr. Santiago Lattanzio heavily influenced the opposition, warning the county against greenlighting the project and calling the developer's noise claims wildly inaccurate.
While developers promised a facility "as quiet as a breeze," Dr. Lattanzio noted their acoustic model only evaluated five fans and five chillers, underestimating the project's true scale.
According to his review, cooling the facility would actually require roughly 180 modules (spanning 2.5 football fields), generating a continuous, low-frequency hum that local traffic could not mask.
Dr. Lattanzio criticized the developer for failing to provide transparent modeling, guaranteed equipment specs, or clear soundproofing plans.
Commission deliberations
County planning staff admitted that without an extensive list of customized "Conditions of Approval" drafted to mitigate the facility's impact, they would have been forced to recommend denial outright.
To address community fears, the developer had offered voluntary restrictions, and staff proposed a strict 850-foot setback from the eastern property line to ensure a total buffer of 1,750 feet from the Arden community and Saddle View Elementary School.
Ultimately, commissioners expressed deep skepticism about forcing the massive project into existing frameworks.
"We’re trying to make it fit. [The current zoning code] is not that. We’re going to create that. But it is not that," said Commissioner Marci Woodward, questioning why the proposal required such an extensive, unprecedented list of customized restrictions.
With Project Tango officially rejected, the county is moving swiftly to permanently rewrite the rules for future developers.
By a 7-0 vote earlier this month, Palm Beach County commissioners advanced a proposal to establish a formal moratorium on future large-scale data centers.
The proposed regulations will move to a first reading on Aug. 27, initiating the public hearing process to formally define and regulate these massive facilities before any similar projects can be considered.
