Springfield’s Planning and Zoning Commission Thursday approved recommending two items involving data centers to Springfield’s City Council.
The first agenda item was a request by the city to add definitions for data centers to the city’s land development codes. Justin Crighton Assistant Director of Planning & Development explained the need for the definitions.
"First of all,” he said, “staff needs to be able to determine in a clear way what is and is not a data center, and second, we are charged with writing standards to regulate these and it's a very difficult thing to do if we don’t know how to classify them first. The term data center itself covers a wide range of things.”
City staff clarified that the definitions would not add any regulations on where or how data centers may be built.
Itwould create three classes for data centers: An accessory data center, one that is less than 1 megawatt, inside another building, not more than 20 percent of its gross floor area, and serving only the owner or tenant.
A micro data center, not more than 10,000 square feet and less than 5 megawatts. And a large-load data center, 5 megawatts or more, or more than 10,000 square feet.
The definitions are similar to an ordinance passed by the City of Ozark earlier this year.
That item passed with only one nay vote, from commissioner Helen Gunther. It will move on to consideration by City Council at their next meeting October 26. City staff told the commission they should likely expect another draft of the definitions to come back before them in December.
Read the full definitions in Thursday's P&Z Commission meeting agenda.
The Commission also looked at a request by the city to extend its data center moratorium. It's currently due to expire November 17.
Staff said the extension would push the expiration date to February 24.
That item passed unanimously. It also moves on to City Council.
A handful of public speakers took the public comment period time, mostly to speak against data centers, some asked for a year’s extension on the moratorium, one suggested that micro and large-load centers be nested under one definition to acknowledge the risks they both pose, another speaker spoke out against over regulation and government overreach, at times the commission struggled to keep speakers on topic as they veered away from discussing the specific agenda items and into broader issues of AI and ecological impacts.