Local politicians in Provence, France, want to overturn a decision to approve a data center being built outside Marseille following a change of mayor.

Telehouse had been granted permission to build the data center at Sybilles business park in Les Pennes-Mirabeau, a commune located near Marseille in the Bouches-du-Rhône department of the Provence region.

The decision was taken by Michel Amiel, mayor of Les Pennes-Mirabeau, following a public inquiry last year.

However, Amiel stepped down at elections in March, after 25 years in the role, and residents in the city of Saint-Victoret, near the data center site, want to work with new municipal officials in Les Pennes-Mirabeau to file an appeal against the plan.

According to a report in La Provence, municipal councilor Pierre Gelsi, who represents Saint-Victoret, told a meeting on Friday, April 10: “The building permit for the data center was signed by the former mayor, Michel Amiel, before the municipal elections. A group, including the neighborhood associations of Les Pallières in Pennes-Mirabeau and Les Sybilles-Amphoux in Saint-Victoret, as well as local residents, has formed to file an appeal against this building permit."

Gelsi said opposition to the data center is focused on the amount of power it will consume, as well as potential air pollution issues. Telehouse wants to build a 50MW data center on the site, and hopes to have it up and running by 2027.

DCD has reached out to Telehouse for comment.

Founded in 1988 and owned by Japanese telco KDDI, Telehouse has operations in 15 cities globally, including in the US, UK, France, Germany, China, Singapore, Vietnam, and Japan.

In France, the firm operates the 7,000 sqm (75,347 sq ft) Telehouse Paris Voltaire site.

It has also been investing in its Magnay 2 development in the French capital. First announced in October 2022 and launched a year later, this will consist of five data halls at full build-out, offering 18MW across 12,000 sqm of IT space. The campus is a former EADS military site. The latest phase, a 3MW expansion, opened in May 2025.

Marseille is France’s second-largest data center market, and is dominated by Digital Realty, which has six sites around the city in operation or under development.