US real estate firm Oppidan Investment Company has dropped plans to develop a data center in North Mankato, Minnesota.

As reported by the Mankato Free Press (MFP), Oppidan was previously considering a data center development in the city to the southwest of Minneapolis.

According to North Mankato's community development director, Michael Fischer, the company is "no longer interested" in the city and withdrew its proposal a few months earlier, before actually making an official application.

Discussions about the project do not seem to have progressed very far, with Fischer saying that permitting had not progressed beyond initial conversations, and no information about the data center - size, location, water usage, and electricity demand - was provided to the city.

The decision to back out of the project, MFP reports, was motivated by the challenges in gaining permits for backup generators, which the company was concerned would take too long.

Oppidan did not respond to MFP's requests for comments.

While Oppidan is not pursuing a project, an "alternative urban areawide review" recently suggested that the 679-acre Northport Industrial Park could be home to a "technology park."

Fischer said that the city would not be interested in a hyperscale data center coming to the park, but that “data centers come in all shapes and sizes. They’re not all hyperscale.”

Currently, no active data center proposals are ongoing at the park.

Despite pulling out in North Mankato, Oppidan still had developments underway in Eagan and Apple Valley, Minnesota.

Oppidan itself is based in Minnesota, and says it has been developing data centers since 2016. The company has been busy on numerous smaller projects across the US in the last year. Oppidan recently filed to build a 5MW facility in El Paso, Texas, and broke ground on a 90,000 sq ft (8,360 sqm) data center in Chicago, Illinois.

It also has projects in Reno, Nevada; Temple, Texas; and Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The vast majority of Minnesota's data centers are located in and around Minneapolis. Operators include Cologix, Flexential, DataBank, LightEdge, EdgeConneX, and others.