city HallLouisville Metro Council appears poised to approve a moratorium on new data center construction after delaying a vote on the measure for nearly a year.The council’s Planning and Zoning Committee voted 7-1 Tuesday afternoon to move the proposal forward to the full council for approval. The 26-member Metro Council is expected to take a final vote on the legislation next week.It was an abrupt change up to how the council has dealt with the idea of a data center moratorium in the past. A pause on approving new projects was proposed last September, after a 1.6-million-square-foot hyperscale data center was approved with little public input. The council, however, continued to delay a vote on the moratorium for nearly a year, opting instead to keep the proposal in committee as a threat to developers.Asked what had changed in recent weeks, District 15 Democrat Jennifer Chappell, who authored the moratorium, said “people realized it was politically convenient for them to do this.”“The community really getting behind this issue and letting their opinions be heard, whether that led to the impact, I’m not sure,” Chappell said. “But I’m grateful some minds were changed.”Chappell said she was never in favor of keeping the moratorium in committee to deter developers from proposing new data centers. She said it “felt like a farce in a lot of ways,” because there was nothing concrete to prevent them.Under the proposal advanced Tuesday, city planners would be barred from approving any new data center construction for six months or until Metro Council approves comprehensive regulations.“I hope that people can breathe a little sigh of relief knowing that we’re not so under the gun to get these regulations correct,” she said. “These regulations are going to shape Louisville for decades to come and so it’s important that we take it slow and get them right.”Louisville officials are currently hosting a series of public hearings for residents to weigh in on a proposed set of new zoning rules.Those regulations, developed by Democratic Mayor Craig Greenberg’s administration, would ban hyperscale data centers larger than 500,000-square-feet. Other developments would have to meet special standards and would mostly be limited to industrial areas in Jefferson County.The city’s Planning Commission will debate the regulations after the final public hearing takes place on Aug. 10. The commission will then make a recommendation to Metro Council, which has the final say.District 9 Council Member Andrew Owen, a Democrat who chairs the council’s Planning and Zoning Committee, voted in favor of the proposed moratorium Tuesday. He said he always supported passing it, but he wanted to be sure that, if the committee moved it, there was enough votes in the full chamber to get it approved.Owen told reporters following the committee meeting he thinks the previous strategy of holding the moratorium in committee clearly worked, since no new proposals have come forward despite interest from developers.“We’ve just made it more official, and, now that it goes to the full council, people get an opportunity to vote on it and, for the record, people can see where everyone stands,” he said.Owen said he now believes there are enough votes to pass the moratorium.The moratorium will not impact the hyperscale data center that is currently under construction on Camp Ground Road near Shively. That project was already approved under the outdated zoning rules Louisville currently has in effect.Mayoral candidates weigh in on data center moratoriumAhead of the vote Tuesday afternoon, Mayor Craig Greenberg commented on the proposed moratorium at his weekly press conference.Greenberg said he thinks it's important that “no additional actions related to data centers are taken while the outdated regulations are on the books.”“That’s why, today, I’m calling on Metro Council to pass the data center moratorium ordinance,” he said. “This will guarantee that any new applications for data centers will be reviewed under the updated version of the standards that are ultimately passed.”Greenberg’s call to pass the moratorium, eleven months after it was first proposed, comes amid increasing public pressure on city officials to limit data center construction.Multiple local governments in Kentucky have already passed data center moratoriums, including Bell County, Bullitt County, Daviess County and the City of London. Across the river, in Jeffersonville, the city council voted Monday to implement a year-long moratorium.In Louisville, residents' views on data centers, collected through two separate surveys, have been overwhelmingly negative. Many expressed they don’t want data centers anywhere in Jefferson County.Greenberg has also been pressured by activists with the group No Data Center 502, who interrupted one of his weekly press conferences and heckled him at the annual Dainty Fest.The mayor has argued that his administration’s proposed regulations “tells you where he stands on this issue.” And when asked by a reporter Tuesday why he’s coming out in support now, Greenberg said he had previously been more focused on proposing new regulations and he viewed the moratorium proposal as “a temporary fix.”District 3 Metro Council Member Shameka Parrish-Wright, a progressive who is running for mayor against Greenberg in the November election, is sponsoring the moratorium ordinance, along with Chappell and District 1 Democrat Tammy Hawkins.Parrish-Wright has been urging the Planning and Zoning Committee to move the ordinance forward and participated in a rally in front of Metro Hall last month, calling for stricter regulations than the ones Greenberg’s proposed.In a statement Tuesday, Parrish-Wright questioned Greenberg’s intentions in coming out in favor of the moratorium now.“It is interesting that after months of this ordinance languishing in committee after being tabled, and after weeks of poor publicity, the Mayor suddenly chose to take a position on data centers only after I called for this item to be returned to the table,” Parrish-Wright said, pointing to an email she sent to the committee chair on July 21. “Once again, Mayor Greenberg failed to meet the moment and is now using his weekly address to appear as though he has been on the side of his constituents the whole time."Because the ordinance received one “No” vote from District 20 Council Member Stuart Benson, a Republican, the legislation will be placed on the next Metro Council agenda under “Old Business.” That means Metro Council members will be allowed to debate it before taking a final vote. ...read more read less