The Portage City Council created a new zoning category for data centers, restricting where they can be built.
“This will make it, in my opinion, much more difficult to build a data center,” Mayor Austin Bonta said.
Until Tuesday’s vote, a data center was considered a warehouse for zoning purposes. With the new technology campus category, anyone proposing to build a data center would have to bring the request to the council for a decision. The council could vote yes, no or yes but with conditions, Bonta said.
Councilwoman Penny Ambler, R-4th, convinced the council to amend the ordinance to effectively limit a data center to 65 feet high, instead of 75 feet as originally proposed to allow two-story buildings, and to reduce the maximum noise level at the property line from 65 decibels to 55 decibels, so less than the 66 decibels for industrial operations and roughly the level of a conversation.
Bonta said a semiconductor factory or pharmaceutical operation would also be allowed in the technology campus zone.
The ordinance allows data centers, but it creates a series of hoops for developers to go through before one can be built. First, no land is currently zoned for a technology campus, so rezoning for that category would require Plan Commission review and City Council approval. Second, any hyperscale data center, as defined by the ordinance, would have to be in a planned development, meaning a special zoning category just for that property. That gives the council even more power in setting conditions for that zone.
A moratorium on data centers or making it impossible to build one in Portage would open up the city to a lawsuit it likely would lose, Bonta said.
It’s like Prince Charming having a glass slipper that’s really too small to fit anyone, said Councilman Ferdinand Alvarez, D-At-large.
With this ordinance, the city has the best toolbox possible to negotiate the best deal for the city before a data center is built, City Attorney Dan Bartnicki said.
Bonta said any data center should have a decommissioning plan. The city couldn’t put that in the ordinance in case it’s unenforceable, but the council could require it as part of any approval.
Before voting for the ordinance, Councilman Collin Czilli, D-5th, predicted the state government, which is all in for AI, would strip local control over where data centers can be built.
In other business, the council approved an ordinance allowing code enforcement to visually inspect trees that could be dead, diseased or dangerous and require the appropriate actions so the trees don’t fall onto a neighbor’s property or the city’s right of way.
Another ordinance, dealing with neglected premises, cleaned up the language so when code enforcement issues a ticket, it’s referring to the actual violation rather than a definition of it.
A third ordinance allows Dayton Street Partners to try again to find tenants for its 38.5-acre site at 5941 Coca-Cola Ave. The company gained approval for a planned development several years ago, but post-pandemic market forces hindered efforts to find tenants, so the zoning reverted to its original category.
Alvarez asked Bonta for clarification about a new policy requiring cashless transactions for certain park uses. That applies to beer garden ticket purchases at Founders Square and hall rental for Woodland Park events.
“You can’t just show up with a suitcase full of cash to pay your rental,” Bonta said.
Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
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