Aurora City Council to vote on data center moratorium following community pushback

Aurora's mayor made his opinion on pausing the data center discussion clear in writing.

The answer is a resounding "no," Mayor Mike Coffman said, responding to a developer's letter to the city council.

Vantage said it will evaluate locating the Trident data center on sites farther from residential neighborhoods if the city council agrees to a 90-day pause on any efforts to enact new legislative requirements on development.

Mayor Coffman said, "We need to move forward 'NOW' with new guidelines that protect residential areas so that we don't have another Trident situation."

The co-presidents of Join Unite, a nonprofit formed just weeks ago to oppose the Trident data center, hope the third time's the charm to finally put firm rules in place around data centers.

"We are cautiously hopeful that that actually is what's happening behind the scenes. But we're dealing with billionaires and huge corporations," said Makayla Llanos, one of the organization's leaders.

Monday, city council will decide whether to implement a data center moratorium.

That follows the city council's rejection of a six-month moratorium earlier this year, with Coffman casting the tie-breaking vote to kill it. After an uproar from the community in mid-October, the council unanimously voted to approve the first reading of an ordinance keeping data centers from being built in areas zoned "mixed-use office/ institutional" near schools, homes and assisted living facilities.

City leaders will vote on an indefinite moratorium on new applications.

"I hope the city does not agree to those terms, and I hope the city stands up for themselves and for us," said Tara Miller, one of the leaders of Join Unite.

A new moratorium would not stop Vantage from moving forward with the Trident data center because it's already been approved.

Any moratorium proposed would need seven votes to pass because the effort previously failed and likely wouldn't go into effect until February.

Aurora says that because the vote on 18a failed in August, council members must vote to reconsider it before they vote on the moratorium again. If city council agrees to vote on it again and the resolution passes, the moratorium would take effect immediately.

The city council will make a final vote on a separate issue, 12b.1, that would remove data centers at a permitted use in mixed-use-office institutional zone districts. If passed, the ordinance would take effect in 30 days.