Demolition crews are clearing a site on the border of Inver Grove Heights and South St. Paul that, according to preliminary talks, could find a second life as a data center.
A zoning and land use application for a data center was filed last week for the 14-acre site located at 5890 Carmen Ave. in Inver Grove Heights, which formerly housed a business known as Travel Tags. It rests on the border of South St. Paul, near the South St. Paul Municipal Airport.
Inver Grove Heights city staff said this week they had not completed a review of the application, which was received Feb. 26, and could not comment on what it includes. Zoning for the site in question currently allows for a data center as a permitted use.
The site was sold in December to Fortress Investment Group, a California-based investment firm. Fortress Investment Group is a subsidiary of Mubadala Investment Company, a state-owned investment fund of the government of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.
Travel Tags was founded in 1973 and began as a printing company for luggage tags and travel accessories. The business was purchased by the Glen Taylor-owned Taylor Corporation in 1993, and over the years pivoted to printing retail gift cards. Notably, the company became a printer for the gift cards sold by Apple Inc.
Speaking generally about the application process, Inver Grove Heights Community Development Director Jason Ziemer said the procedure is collaborative between city planning and engineering staff and the developer to ensure the project meets city standards.
“We do the best we can to collaborate with an entity to make sure that all the plans are completed, and that they’ve addressed all the particular comments that we have,” Ziemer said.
Once an application is deemed complete, the project would go before the planning commission. The commission’s recommendation would then go to the city council.
Based on the size of the Travel Tags land parcel, a data center would take a smaller form than other proposed sites elsewhere in Dakota County that have brought contention and outcry from local residents. For example, a particularly embattled data center development in Farmington covers some 340 acres, which is nearly 25 times the size of the former Travel Tags site.
Representatives for Fortress Investment Group declined comment regarding plans for the Carmen Avenue property.
Data center trends
Some data center projects in other cities have raised questions about non-disclosure agreements, and whether cities are signing them. Ziemer said Inver Grove Heights has not signed any non-disclosure agreements.
“Inver Grove Heights does not have any of that,” he said. “I’ve been here for a year and a half, almost two years, and that subject has never come up with any development that has come into the city.”
While data centers themselves have existed for decades, the rise of cloud computing has created a need for larger dedicated facilities. As of late, this trend has been compounded by the rise of artificial intelligence among tech titans like Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Google. This has led to the rise of hyperscale data centers – like the Farmington project – massive sites with colossal energy and water demands for the intensive computation power required to operate A.I. applications.
Other types of data centers include “edge” data centers, smaller centers built near a business or its end users, named for being near the so-called edge of a network. There also are “enterprise” data centers, facilities for a single organization and its information technology team; and also “co-located” data centers, shared spaces where more than one company might subcontract and locate IT needs. There are data centers that focus on cloud computing, too.
Elsewhere in the county, the Eagan City Council recently passed a moratorium pausing any further data center development within the city for at least a year. Eagan city staff have said they plan to use the time to study long-term infrastructure impacts, and review how future data centers best fit within city zoning regulations. Aside from the hyperscale project in Farmington, work continues on a 280-acre development in Rosemount with Meta, Facebook’s parent company.
Dakota County data center review
Dakota County Commissioner Joe Atkins addressed the Inver Grove Heights data center scuttlebutt with a detailed Facebook post on Feb 24.
The County Board would not be in control of any approval decisions in this Inver Grove Heights project, but commissioners are set to hear a review of the impacts of data centers across the county at the board’s April 7 meeting.
For Atkins, he is concerned about regional issues like the demand data centers make on the power grid, water supply impacts and infrastructure planning.
Related Articles
Farmington police squad car involved in serious injury crash
St. Paul: Ex-gas station employee gets 3-year prison term for shooting 2 men during fight outside store
Waiting for a mentor: Zeek
‘It’s the work that paid off’: How ‘two-a-days’ all season led Simley to another state wrestling title
Lakeville teen charged with robbery at school allegedly had gun, though no weapon found
Residents had been asking him more often about the site, Atkins said, and while he again reiterated that county commissioners do not control city development decisions, he felt it was important to respond to his constituents by making the social media post.
When the County Commissioners review data center development across Dakota County in April, Atkins is hoping to see how all of the projects fit in the bigger scheme of anticipated impacts. He mentioned specifically energy costs and grid use, county water use, as well as potential economic impacts in terms of additional property tax proceeds, and added construction jobs during site development.
“I hope that will be the start of an ongoing conversation, and review, of all that we have going on with data centers,” Atkins said.
Leave a Reply