Ernie Cox, project manager for the planned AI hyperscale data center and warehouse project near 20-Mile Bend, said after a contentious Wednesday, Feb. 25 informational meeting that owners of the property want to be good neighbors to nearby Arden residents because neighbors they shall be.
“We are going to move forward based on the existing approvals on the property,” he said.
Doing so would mean the property owner, Palm Beach Aggregates Holdings Inc., would not need further approval from the Palm Beach County Commission.
WATCH THE FEB. 25 TOWN HALL MEETING HERE
Commissioners are scheduled to hear a request to increase the allowable square footage at the site to 3.7 million square feet at an April 23 meeting. The current approvals, which date back to 2016, are for approximately 2.2 million square feet for warehouses and other industrial uses.
Under the Palm Beach County Unified Land Development Code, data centers are listed among the permitted uses. There is no distinction made in the current code for “AI hyperscale data centers,” which did not exist in 2016.
Arden Homeowners’ Association President Raymond Penuela said there should be.
“There’s a difference… and [the developers] know it,” he said. “It’s more of a heavy industrial use.”
Cox, founder of Jupiter-based Family Lands Remembered LLC, said the Central Park Commerce Center — also known as “Project Tango” — is scaling back the AI data portion of the project from 1.8 million square feet to approximately 1.3 million square feet. The rest will be used for warehouses.
The five data center buildings are being moved father west on the 202-acre property, and the cooling systems for three of the buildings are being housed in separate structures to decrease excess sound, Cox said. As a further sound buffer, warehouses will be located between the data centers and the large berm that surrounds Arden, he said.
“Going forward, I think this is a better outcome that addresses the issues that have been raised,” he said.
Cox said that the developers behind Project Tango are committed to doing whatever they reasonably can to ease the concerns of Arden residents and others who fear noise and water pollution, and the over-consumption of electrical power.
Cox expressed disappointment with the tone of the Feb. 25 meeting that was convened as an “informational town hall” by Palm Beach County Mayor Sara Baxter, who brought about a dozen members of county staff to share their expertise. Some were shouted down.
Several hundred people — mostly in the “Say No To Project Tango” camp — attended and aggressively voiced their frustration. Many wore green and orange anti-Tango shirts and carried signs such as “Stop Tango Terrorism.”
“Unfortunately, there was a lot of yelling and screaming,” said Cox, who addressed the group. “I’d hoped to really be able to talk with the folks. We’re trying our best to get accurate information into everyone’s hands.
To that end, Cox said, a promotional/informational web site has been created at www.centralparkcommercecenter.com.
“People are upset, and they have every right to be,” Indian Trail Improvement District President Elizabeth Accomando said afterward. “We were promised unbiased outside experts… [and] we left with more questions than answers… Residents have a right to know what the impacts are going to be.”
The Project Tango site is not far from ITID’s borders, which encompass some 110 square miles. The district provides roads, parks and drainage to approximately 50,000 residents in the unincorporated Acreage/Loxahatchee section of the county.
Baxter, who represents the area on the county commission, reiterated her opposition to the project and stated that she would be a no vote if the project came back before the board.
Action by the commissioners beyond that in an attempt to stop the project, she said, would open the county up to significant legal action by the property owners — perhaps into the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Baxter also defended the county’s decision not to order an independent noise study.
“We’re not legally allowed to do that,” she said. “If the Arden residents want to do so and share those findings with the board, they can.”
Arden HOA Vice President David Zita said the town hall did nothing to change the “hearts and minds” of residents.
“We didn’t get the answers we were looking for,” he said. “It was a collective waste of time.”
With bills to limit AI data centers moving through the state legislature’s current session, several nationally known law firms have offered their assistance to forestall construction at the Project Tango site until such laws could take effect in July, Arden HOA Secretary Ben Brown said.
Brown also is a board member of the Western Palm Beach Community Alliance, formed recently to hire lobbyists and lawyers to fight Project Tango.
“There are legal avenues available to us, especially as it relates to the expansion,” he said.
For Brown and many of the 7,000 residents of the private, gated community, however, even a scaled-back data center will be too much.
“I can’t say we would ever be comfortable with any AI data center there,” he said.
Thank you for covering this subject. In addition to “Commissioners are scheduled to hear a request to increase the allowable square footage at the site to 3.7 million square feet at an April 23 meeting. The current approvals, which date back to 2016, are for approximately 2.2 million square feet for warehouses and other industrial uses.” it is worth noting that in January 2025, the site had approval for:
• 206,000 sq ft of Data Center
• 1,814,000 sq ft of Warehouse
• Total: 2,020,000 sq ft
Mayor Baxter, who is the commissioner for district 6, where Project Tango is proposed, mentioned during the February Townhall that the developer was approved in 2016 to build a data center of up to 2 million 20 sq ft. This is an error by a factor of 10, which is very concerning coming from someone who is in charge of protecting the constituents, including the children from the nearby elementary school. This was mentioned several times, but repeating an error doesn’t make it a truth. The county should update their definitions, should not allow even those 206,000 sq ft to be used for an AI Data Center, because the original approval had no mention of “AI,” The county should educate commissioners by sponsoring a trip to an operational hyper-scale, 1,300,000 sq ft AI Data Center and see for themselves what it would mean for the children who are in the school yard, a short distance from an AI Data Center and account for the fact that it will be much worse, because nobody has built a hyper scale AI Data Center this far south in temperature and humidity conditions similar to South Florida summers. As far as definitions go, what if back in the 60s, Project Apollo was approved in close proximity to a school, replacing a weather ballon launch pad, based on an old definition of “launching objects in the air”? Palm Beach County has made excellent progress in becoming a modern hub of development, and that should be reflected in the zoning definitions, which should be brought up to second quarter of 21st century, to keep up with the fast technological advances. Thank you!
Mayor Baxter also stated, “Why would the County pay for a noise study when the vote is going to be no anyway?” It is very interesting (concerning) that one commissioner seems to already know what the other commissioner’s will vote, especially for a quasi-judicial hearing that will decide on this and comments like this aren’t even allowed. This comment and “I am against Project Tango” will most likely allow or force her to recuse herself from voting on this, therefore being able to continue with the statements that were made and attempt to make her look good in the end.