As the tech industry races to build sprawling facilities to fulfill growing data needs, the Eagan City Council has decided to pause any further data center development within the city, allowing staff to study long-term infrastructure impacts, clarify changing design standards and review how future data warehouses could fit within the zoning patchwork of the city.

The moratorium halts development of any new data center that would use more than 20 megawatts of electricity or that is proposed to be within 500 feet of residential homes for one year, lasting until Feb. 17, 2027.

Eagan city staff were not aware of any other active data center moratoria in the Twin Cities area; this move is believed to be the first.

The push of artificial intelligence among industry giants in the technology sector has led to the growth of large scale data centers, required for the intensive computation power required to store, process and analyze data for the large language models driving popular A.I. applications.

The most noticeable growth has come from huge “hyperscale” data centers planned by tech giants like Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Google, facilities that can use hundreds of megawatts.

An Amazon Web Services data center is seen on Aug. 22, 2024, in Boardman, Ore. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane, File)

As of this fall, at least 13 hyper-scale data centers had been proposed across the state; there are no hyperscale data centers currently planned in Eagan.

Other types of data centers include “edge” data centers, smaller centers built near a business or its end users; “enterprise” data centers, a facility that handles a single organization and its information technology team; and “co-located” data centers, a shared space where more than one company might subcontract and locate IT needs. There also are data centers that focus on cloud computing.

Costs and benefits

Reached by email, city of Eagan Director of Community Development Jill Hutmacher said the temporary pause allows for reasonable planning before high-impact facilities potentially are approved one day.

Previously, Eagan has considered data centers within “warehouse” use classifications in business park and industrial districts. But modern data centers are not traditional warehouses, Hutmacher said. They can have higher energy demand and produce significant noise due to large backup power systems, continuous operations and specialized cooling equipment. Reviewing them under warehouse standards can limit the city’s ability to tailor regulations to those unique characteristics.

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Eagan has two existing data centers currently, and two facilities under construction. These smaller data centers fit under the definitions of enterprise, co-location and edge data centers. Under the ordinance, these centers can still complete updates and repairs and finish approved construction.

“Data centers can provide economic benefits, including contributions to the tax base,” said Hutmacher. “At the same time, very large facilities can have unique operational characteristics, including significant energy use, noise-producing mechanical equipment, and long-term infrastructure demands.”

As an indicator of potential economic impacts, the city of Pine Island, Minn., announced this week that Google will build a data center that is expected to pump over $20 million “in Google and developer-funded infrastructure upgrades” to the city and school district, along with creating 100 permanent jobs and 500 construction jobs.

Hutmacher said Eagan’s data center pause should provide clarity and predictability for the city and taxpayers. “It ensures we are planning ahead rather than reacting later. For residents, that means growth that is intentional, transparent, and aligned with the long-term interests of the community.”

With the pause in effect, Eagan city staff plan to review its current codes, consider long-term infrastructure impacts and study noise and operational characteristics.

Community concerns

Eagan resident Leo Caravello spoke before the city council on Feb. 17, supporting the pause on any data center development.

“Modern data centers today have proven time and time again to not be beneficial for our communities overall. They hog and pollute our water. They consume electricity like no other business,” Caravello said. “They generate profit and money for businesses outside of our community while benefitting off of our infrastructure, and rarely improving our community itself.”

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Residents across the state have been concerned about the growth of data centers, specifically regarding the intensive water and energy drain of the mega processing sites. Data center opponents held a rally at the State Capitol on Feb. 18, calling for a statewide ban on hyperscale facilities.

President Donald Trump in Tuesday’s State of the Union address said he would press tech companies to pay higher electricity rates in areas where their data centers are located.

A 280-acre development in Rosemount for Meta, Facebook’s parent company, is still under construction, while in Farmington, residents verbally sparred with the Mayor Joshua Hoyt during a contentious discussion about a proposed data center.

Hoyt has since resigned.

Five months after a touring production of “The Addams Family” departed St. Paul’s Ordway Music Theater, another unpredictably off-the-wall family has come to visit. And they’re sharing the stage with the kind of quirky and painfully awkward teenagers that many pop culture offerings seek but fail to find.

They populate “Kimberly Akimbo,” a musical by playwright David Lindsay-Abaire and composer Jeanine Tesori that took home the “Best Musical” Tony and a host of other awards in 2023. And it’s a wonderfully weird show that strikes me as exactly what’s been needed to bust out of the increasingly narrow confines of “Broadway.”

Both hilarious and heartbreaking – the rare show I’ve attended at which audience members both roared and sobbed – it’s a quirky masterpiece of musical theater, an audaciously original dark comedy that benefits from exceptional performances from all nine of its actors. That’s right: A Broadway musical with only nine characters. But what memorably vivid characters they are.

Ann Morrison, left, who plays the title character, and Marcus Phillips in “Kimberly Akimbo,” a musical dark comedy about a high school student with a disease that rapidly ages her who has an eccentric family and group of friends. The North American touring production is at St. Paul’s Ordway Music Theater through March 1, 2026. (Courtesy of Joan Marcus)

At the center is Kimberly, who is turning 16, but suffers from an affliction that ages her body at four to five times the pace of a normal human. Hence, the end of her life expectancy is nigh, but she’s also finding a fresh beginning at a new high school, where she’s confronted with typical teen challenges like finding friends and assembling science projects. And atypical challenges like having her uproariously unfiltered serial criminal of an aunt hiding out in the school library and trying to get Kimberly and her friends involved in her latest fraud scheme.

And then there’s Kimberly’s home life, which features an emotionally and physically fragile mom preparing to give birth and an undependable alcoholic father. Yes, they’re exasperatingly flawed as parents, but they’re also wildly funny, especially when that unpredictable aunt comes through the window and gradually transforms this offbeat portrait of family and high school life into a caper comedy.

This North American tour played Minneapolis’ Orpheum Theatre last July, and I felt it to be one of the best theatrical experiences I had in 2025. But it’s evolved into an even better production, one that manages to be simultaneously outrageous and moving, carrying its conflicting emotional extremes with grace and nuance.

Director Jessica Stone has given the show a briskly engaging pace that slows enough to let its deepest emotions resonate. Skillfully carrying the tale as Kimberly is Ann Morrison, marvelously placing the qualities of a bubbly when not sulky teen in the voice and body of an older woman.

Her unreliable parents are fascinatingly fleshed out by Jim Hogan and Laura Woyasz. Yes, the characters can be frustratingly self-absorbed, but Hogan and Woyasz might summon up your sympathy for this pair that became parents too early and have never really gotten the hang of the job.

Marcus Phillips spearheads a spot-on quintet of classmates, each bursting with self-conscious awkwardness and a desire to be seen and understood. But no character in any Broadway musical of recent vintage is designed to steal scenes like Aunt Debra, and Emily Koch obliges with a bold, brassy portrayal that proves a key catalyst for the engaging spirit of this marvelous production.

Rob Hubbard can be reached at wordhub@yahoo.com.

‘Kimberly Akimbo’

When: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday-Friday, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, 1:30 and 7 p.m. Sunday

Where: Ordway Music Theater, 345 Washington St., St. Paul

Tickets: $150-$45, available at 651-224-4222 or ordway.org

Capsule: A quirky masterpiece of modern musical theater.

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The Wild’s trio of men’s gold medalists made it back to the State of Hockey on Wednesday morning, flying in from Washington, D.C., where a night earlier they had been honored guests at the State of the Union address.

But their stay in Minnesota was brief. Wild coach John Hynes was back on the ice with his team for a morning practice at TRIA Rink, but he gave Matt Boldy, Brock Faber and Quinn Hughes the day off, preferring that they meet the team for its charter flight to Denver in the afternoon.

“They should be ready to go for us tomorrow night in Colorado,” Hynes said, adding that he will rely on the three Americans to manage their own bodies as they dive back into NHL play with four games in the next six days.

“You’re not just going to be able to recover from it, even if it is a day or two off,” said Hynes, who was an assistant coach for Team USA. “I think it’s gonna be on those three guys to be able to manage themselves the right way away from the game. Like we always do with the players, we’ll talk to them about what they need, but the plan is for them to play, and I know they want to play.”

When they were introduced by President Donald Trump at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday night, the hockey team members who chose to attend got a rare bipartisan standing ovation. But their appearance came with some backlash from those who felt the players were being used as a political prop by the president.

Hynes said he feels the players’ trip to the White House and the Capitol were about the red, white and blue, not just the red and blue political divisions in the country.

“It’s an unbelievable experience for them that they were able to win a gold medal and, you know, they get invited to the White House,” Hynes said. “It’s not a political thing. On the team there’s Democrats, there’s Republicans. … It’s more about the celebration of the team, and I think the life experience for the players to be able to do what they were able to do, which is go to the White House, meet the president and be at the State of the Union. It doesn’t really have anything to do with politics.”

Hynes had his family with him in Italy and spoke of an unforgettable experience with his wife and daughters leading up to the finale. He also offered praise for Wild general manager Bill Guerin, who assembled the team that claimed the nation’s first Olympic men’s hockey crown since the 1980 Miracle On Ice team.

“As the general manager of the team, you have to make hard decisions. And I give him a lot of credit,” Hynes said. “He communicated really well with the players that made the team, but also with the players that didn’t make the team. And obviously, anytime you have to make those hard decisions on a national stage, with the type of players and the talent level of the players who don’t make the team, unless you win … you’re probably under criticism or second-guessing.”

Hynes added that one of his lasting images from the post-victory celebration was Guerin’s look of relief and happiness, with tears in his eyes, as U.S. players reveled in their hockey glory.

The Wild have back-to-back road games Thursday at Colorado and Friday at Utah to get back into NHL play. Both games face off at 8 p.m. CST.

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By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN, Associated Press

The Trump administration’s latest policy of deporting immigrants to “third countries” to which they have no ties is unlawful and must be set aside, a federal judge ruled Wednesday in a case that already reached the nation’s highest court.

U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy in Massachusetts agreed to suspend his decision for 15 days, giving the government time to appeal his latest ruling in the case. Murphy noted that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the administration’s favor last year, pausing Murphy’s previous decision and clearing the way for a flight carrying several migrants to complete its trip to war-torn South Sudan, where they had no ties.

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Murphy said migrants challenging the Department of Homeland Security’s policy have the right to “meaningful notice” and an opportunity to object before they are removed to a third country. The policy “extinguishes valid challenges to third-country removal by effecting removal before those challenges can be raised,” the judge concluded.

“These are our laws, and it is with profound gratitude for the unbelievable luck of being born in the United States of America that this Court affirms these and our nation’s bedrock principle: that no ‘person’ in this country may be ‘deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,’” Murphy wrote.

In June, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority found that immigration officials can quickly deport people to third countries. Liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, saying the ruling gives the government special treatment.

Murphy said President Donald Trump’s administration has repeatedly violated — or tried to violate — his orders. Last March, he noted, the Defense Department deported at least six class members to El Salvador and Mexico without providing the process required under a temporary restraining order that Murphy issued.

“The simple reality is that nobody knows the merits of any individual class member’s claim because (administration officials) are withholding the predicate fact: the country of removal,” wrote Murphy, who was nominated to the bench by Democratic President Joe Biden.

Murphy said the DHS third-country removal policy has targeted immigrants who were granted protection from being sent back to their home countries, where they feared being tortured or persecuted in other ways.

Eight men who were sent to South Sudan in May had been convicted of crimes in the U.S. and had final orders of removal, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have said.