A data center could come to Hermantown, Minnesota.

On October 6, the Hermantown City Council Meeting unanimously voted to adopt a proposal for a data center titled the ‘Alternative Urban Area Review.’ Although the document does not explicitly use the term data center, councilors confirmed in the meeting that the project proposal is for a data center.

The document, published on August 5, shows that the facility will consist of four buildings located on a 403-acre parcel bounded to the north by Morris Thomas Road, to the east by Midway Road, and to the west by Solway Road.

This decision did not go unopposed during the meeting. The document also contains comments from various governmental and private entities expressing concerns familiar to many local communities across the US, including worries about spiking electricity and water demand, noise pollution, the impact on the character of the local environment, procedural issues, and the inadequacy of the proposed mitigation plan.

The plan estimates that the data center will be completed within five to ten years, and its end user is currently unknown. Details about its potential capacity were also not disclosed.

Hermantown is a suburb of Duluth, a port city in eastern Minnesota. It is not a data center hotspot.

Most of the state’s data centers are located around Minneapolis. Meta is developing in the state, and Amazon Web Services previously planned a data center in Minnesota but withdrew plans earlier this year.