The Beale Infrastructure-backed Project Atlas has failed to secure a recommendation from the Planning Commission of Coweta, Oklahoma, making it more likely that the project will be rejected by Coweta’s City Council when it considers it in February.

The vote was cast on January 19, with a majority of the commission voting against recommending a rezoning request that would allow Beale to construct a data center campus spanning 270 acres along 16192 State Highway 51B.

Whether the rezoning request gets approved or not now depends on the City Council.

Reports from last October show that the facility, if approved, would consist of at least one phase with three possible additional phases. Each phase would cover approximately 200,000 sq ft (18,580 sqm).

The facility has encountered a great deal of opposition from local residents.

A public Facebook group titled ‘Say NO to Coweta, Ok Data Center (Atlas Project)’ has amassed around 1,800 members at time of writing, with members posting regular updates about the project’s planning and approval process.

The concerns expressed in this group are similar to those expressed by many other members of Facebook groups which have sprung up in opposition to data centers across the US. This includes worries about: water usage, electricity usage, the environmental impact, corruption, procedural errors, and more.

This animus has led the City of Coweta, in the interest of transparency, to respond to frequently asked questions about Project Atlas in the form of a website.

Some of the details about Project Atlas include: a brief timeline of the project’s development history, the pros and cons of data centers, and the potential financial benefit – the city estimates that the campus will pay between $1 million and $3 million in electric utility franchise fee revenue – of having a data center in the area.

Beale Infrastructure also has its own website about Project Atlas, emphasizing various positive features of the campus like its “tax revenue independence” and its potential for job creation.

According to Beale’s timeline, construction would ideally start by summer of this year.

Beale Infrastructure, backed by asset management firm Blue Owl, is in the process of developing multiple campuses. The developer bought a land parcel for its Project Pilot data center in De Soto, Kansas, last September, and it is in talks to build another campus outside Tulsa, Oklahoma.