After twice being rescheduled following protests earlier this week, the Hermantown City Council unanimously approved several key agreements late Friday night for a controversial proposed Google data center in northeast Minnesota despite vehement local opposition.

The votes took place following four hours of public comment and about an hour of discussion. The meeting wrapped up just before midnight.

The council approved a development agreement for the 1.7 million-square-foot project, which is slated to be built on more than 200 acres in a rural residential area of Hermantown just outside Duluth.

Other approvals included a special use permit and a plan to decommission the site in the event the data center isn’t completed or abandoned.

“What we've done tonight is not about AI. It's not about big tech. It's not about software,” said Hermantown Councilmember John Geissler. “It's about a project here in Hermantown, a land use application, and agreements that are associated with that. And we've done an awful lot of work to get to this point. It has gone on with a lot of responsibility, and I thank the rest of the council for sticking in there with it.”

The council was initially set to vote on the data center Monday night. But that meeting was canceled following two consecutive hours of chanting and protests outside the council chambers.

The meeting was initially rescheduled for Tuesday night, but then rescheduled again for Friday. The city restricted attendance to 85 people.

It closed an overflow room that was open for past meetings. The city instead offered a virtual option to watch the meeting and allowed people to email comments in advance of the meeting.

That angered project opponents, including the grassroots group Stop the Hermantown Data Center, which has repeatedly asked the city to move meetings to a larger venue to accommodate larger crowds.

“Limiting attendance to 85 people, restricting sign-up times, and forcing residents to stand outside in the cold, in the elements. Two and a half hours for me. How is that fair?” asked Brian Bergeron of Hermantown during his allotted three minutes to speak. “How Is that representative government?”

Most people in attendance spoke against the proposal, although supporters also addressed the council. Hermantown resident Eric Palmer said a highlight of the deal is the $210 million decommissioning agreement, which he said protects the city if the project is scrapped.

“This agreement demonstrates to me personally that Google wants to be a responsible and good neighbor and related investments and jobs are here for the long term,” said Palmer.

Google made other concessions in the weeks leading up to the votes. It agreed to drop a request for up to $80 million in property tax breaks. The project now will provide an estimated $3 million annually in property tax revenue to Hermantown.

Google has also agreed to monitor private wells near the development and has reduced the scale of the project from four buildings to three while capping building height at 33 feet. However, each building would still be larger than six football fields.

“There has been input, and Google has listened, you have listened, and this project has changed,” said Dave Lislegard, a former state legislator from the Iron Range who now directs the labor and industry group Jobs for Minnesotans. “And for that I am very very grateful.”

But project opponents told the council small changes to the project are not enough.

“You've changed as little as possible to legally say that you listened,” said Richard Hilton of Hermantown. “We are angry that our local city council is representing a corporation instead of the citizens that they are supposed to. We're protesting against citizens losing their rights in their own city. No amount of money is worth that.”

The resolutions passed Friday night are the last major local approvals the data center needs to move forward.

But the project still faces three pending lawsuits challenging its environmental review, the city process for changing zoning laws to allow it to move forward and the ownership status of the land on which the data center would be built.

Hermantown city attorney Gunner Johnson said the city is aware of the litigation.

“None of these issues prevent the council from moving forward with tonight's agenda,” he said at the beginning of Friday’s meeting.

The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission also needs to approve an electric service agreement between Google and Minnesota Power. The massive facility is expected to need 500 megawatts of electricity.

That’s about equal to the combined electric power needed to supply all the homes in the cities of Minneapolis, St. Paul, Duluth and Rochester, according to the Citizens Utility Board of Minnesota.

Google is also planning a massive data center outside Pine Island, near Rochester. That project must now undergo a more robust environmental review process overseen by the state following a settlement over a lawsuit.

Data centers have become an explosive political issue over the past year across the country, with polls showing both Democrats and Republicans oppose having them built in their communities.

They’ve also encouraged many local residents to run for office. In Hermantown, three first-time candidates are running for two open city council seats, spurred largely by the data center issue.

Collected from Minnesota Public Radio News. View original source here.