‘Proactive not reactive’: Planning commission moves forward with ordinance amendments

After being asked 100 questions by Owatonna, Northfield and Pine Island residents about data centers, the Owatonna Planning Commission moved forward with recommending its proposed ordinance amendments, including defining and regulating data centers. “It’s a 0.001% area of what we’re doing,” Community Development Manager Greg Kruschke said about data centers during the open house before Tuesday’s planning commission meeting. “The code was last updated in the ‘80s. There’s been updates through there, but the last major overhaul (was in the 1980s).” Changes to the Zoning Ordinance include cutting about 50 pages, updating zoning districts, adding a shoreland ordinance and modernizing home occupation standards, among others. Data centers were defined as “A facility used for the storage, processing, management, and distribution of digital data and information, consisting of servers, networking equipment and supporting infrastructure such as cooling systems, backup power generation and electrical equipment.” The definition was further broken up to major and minor data centers; major data centers have a capacity threshold of “greater than 5 MW of totaled designed IT load (often expanding to 100+ MW),” while minor data centers have “up to 5 MW of total designed IT load.” During the open house, Planning Specialist Emma Bransford said