A data center spanning 164 acres could be built in the city of Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

The so-called Sioux Falls Technology Park would be located east of Veterans Parkway, south of E. Rice Street, and west of N. Six Mile Road.

In January, developer Gemini Family Office used an affiliated company – Gemini Data Center LLC – to successfully apply for a rezoning request that would make the land parcel suitable for data center use.

However, the project has yet to receive all approvals and could still be denied, according to statements made by the city’s director of planning and development services, Jeff Eckhoff, to local news station Keloland.

If built, the Technology Park would source its energy from Xcel Energy’s neighboring Split Rock Substation. Details about capacity and water use were not provided on the data center campus’ website.

But the website also says that “a fully built 500MW campus using modern closed-loop cooling would also use about the same amount of water as two commercial car washes.”

It is not clear whether this indicates that the Technology Park will offer a similar level of capacity.

Additionally, the data center’s conceptual renderings were likely generated using AI, given that the file names and hyperlinks of both pictures include the term ‘ChatGPT.’

The data center industry has been met with some pushback from residents of South Dakota, and a Facebook group, titled ‘South Dakota for Data Center Transparency,’ has amassed around 3,600 members at the time of writing.

Members of the group have voiced concern about noise pollution, energy usage, and water usage while questioning the purpose of building a data center.

South Dakota is not a major data center market, and most of the state’s data centers are located near Sioux Falls, which is near the southeastern corner of the state.

Plans to build a 430MW campus near the city of Toronto in the state were effectively withdrawn after developer Applied Digital told Keloland that it was “unlikely to go forward.”

The company’s decision was likely influenced by the potential passage of a bill that would protect ratepayers from data center-related price hikes, as well as failed attempts to introduce legislation that would have created tax breaks for the industry.