Menomonie Plan Commission Passes Data Center Zoning Change

The Menomonie Plan Commission approved recommending a zoning code change for Data Centers to the City Council at its meeting on Monday.

The move comes after months of opposition from community members to a proposed data center on land annexed from the Town of Red Cedar in August.

The company behind the project, Balloonist LLC, had proposed plans for a $1.6 billion data center at the site. Local residents expressed concerns about the environmental impact of the project, particularly its water and energy needs.

Over recent weeks, the Menomonie City Council began considering an ordinance change to the zoning code specifically for data centers. That proposal was sent to the Plan Commission, which approved recommending the change at its meeting on Monday.

City of Menomonie Public Works Director David Schofield explained the need for the zoning change to the Plan Commission, noting that while the City is required to accommodate legal land uses, the ordinance change creates the framework to provide reasonable requirements and protections for neighboring property owners.

“So right now our code says that data centers are potentially a subset of the warehousing definition, and then warehousing is allowed in the I-1 and the I-2 district,” said Schofield. “So the proposal tonight is kind of three-fold. First is that council has asked for your opinion on whether to amend the definition of warehousing to eliminate data centers as one of the example uses of warehousing. The next step would be to create a definition of data centers that’s separate. And the third is to create a new data center industrial district, I-4, that would allow for data centers.”

When the Menomonie City Council first considered the ordinance change, Mayor Randy Knaack said it would still allow the city to move forward with a data center project in the future but would give them more power to negotiate better terms and address community concerns.