The Palm Beach County Commission said “no” on July 15 to the expanded Project Tango data center project.
But previous approvals are now coming back to haunt neighbors who oppose the hyperscale AI data center.
County staff on Oct. 7 approved a requestfrom PBA Holdings, one of two landowners in the 202-acre area off Southern Boulevard at 20-Mile Bend, to reassign land uses within the site’s previously approved master plan.
That plan had allowed for 200,000 square feet of data center use and 1.2 million square feet of warehouses, leaving about 600,000 square feet unassigned.
With the Oct. 7 approval, those rights now are assigned to increase the amount for data centers to 698,000 square feet:
- Two data center buildings would be 288,000 square feet each.
- A third building would be a 122,000-square-foot data center.
- The warehouse space would remain unchanged at 1.2 million square feet.
- Support offices and a utility building would account for the remaining 122,000 square feet.
The reworked master plan devotes less space to data centers than the landowner sought in July but more than residents who have fought Project Tango since it came to light in December want to see.
“It looked like we had like a year to catch our breath,” Arden resident Ben Brown said, referring to the commission’s 5-1 rejection in July of an expansion that would have allowed for 1 million square feet of data center use, and the one-year moratorium commissioners approved in August to block new data center applications until zoning rules could be reworked.
“It’s a betrayal,” Brown said. “What appears to be a backdoor option to triple the square footage of the data center site is pretty frustrating.”
Commissioners also had agreed to set up an expert task force to advise zoning staff as it rewrote rules for hyperscale AI data centers. But a memo supporting an item on the commission’s zoning agenda Thursday said they dropped the task force in favor of hiring a consultant.
Commissioners are set to vote Thursday on paying up to $225,000 to the consultant VHB or Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, an employee-owned, planning, engineering, design and environmental services firm.
PBA Holdings, which has owned most of the Project Tango site for decades, put its administrative request in play long before the commission’s July rejection of their proposal to add another 1.6 million square feet of development on the 202-acre site.
Commissioners acknowledged as much after rejecting the expansion, saying they hoped their clear message of opposition could play a role in whether zoning staff concluded the changes to the master plan should be approved.
“To be clear we don’t have say-so but the board has given clear direction at this point about how we feel about this use and its compatibility with our comprehensive plan,” said Commission Vice Mayor Marci Woodward, who ran the meeting. “That would be considered by staff, would it not?”
“Yes,” came the reply from Zoning Director Wendy Hernandez.
The approval doesn’t require commission review and is final, short of a court challenge.
In her approval letter, Hernandez noted that the landowner would have to meet many conditions that had been proposed in July. Among them is an 850-foot buffer on the site’s eastern property line nearest the Arden community in which no data center could be built.
That condition would thwart a move by the site’s other landowner, WPB Logistics Owner, which holds an option to buy land along the eastern buffer and is in a legal feud with PBA Holdings.
WPB Logistics is seeking to convert its 1.2 million square feet of warehouse space into data center space.
Other conditions call for sound studies and continual noise monitoring. The project also would have to use a closed-loop water coolant system, which consumes less water than other approaches.
Meanwhile, PBA Holdings has filed an appeal of the commission rejection under the Florida Land Use and Environmental Dispute Resolution Act. A date for a hearing before a special magistrate has not yet been announced.
