The Planning Commission of Pine Island, Minnesota, has recommended a planned data center be approved.

Developer Ryan Companies submitted an application for the data center, dubbed Project Skyway, in October. If built, the facility would be located on a 482-acre land parcel bounded by 490th Street to the north, Trunk Highway 52 to the west and south, and 195th Avenue in the east.

On Tuesday, the town’s Planning Commission voted in favor of recommending two proposals – a preliminary development plan, as well as a plat application – pertaining to Project Skyway despite fierce objections from the public.

This would effectively rezone the land from agricultural to industrial, paving the way for the data center.

But the application still requires final approval from the council before it can be enacted. The local authority is set to meet on Tuesday December 16, and residents opposed to the proposal have begun organizing opposition on the ‘Stop the Pine Island Data Center’ Facebook group.

The concerns expressed by residents are familiar ones, including: the impact of a data center on the environment, the rural character of a given locale, procedural issues like the signing of NDAs – Ryan Companies has not revealed the identity of the end-user, only saying that the facility would be leased to an unnamed Fortune 100 company – and a potential price hike on utilities.

Some have even called for the imposition of a temporary moratorium, an increasingly common mechanism used by local governments to stem the flow of data center applications being submitted.

Founded in 1938, Minnesota-based Ryan is a national real estate developer and manager. It is currently pursuing data center projects in Phoenix, Arizona and Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Pine Island is located northwest of Rochester, a city in the south of Minnesota. It is not an island.

Most of Minnesota's data centers are in the Minneapolis area.