Beale Infrastructure has withdrawn its proposal to build a data center in Coweta, Oklahoma, called ‘Project Atlas.'
The City of Coweta announced that Beale had “pulled its rezoning application” yesterday, meaning that any items related to the project would not be considered at the upcoming city council meeting.
“In plain terms, no re-zoning means Project Atlas is not moving forward in Coweta,” reads the statement.
Project Atlas would have spanned 270 acres along 16192 State Highway 51B, and the campus would have consisted of at least one phase with three possible additional phases. Each phase would cover approximately 200,000 sq ft (18,580 sqm) of floorspace.
The project also failed to secure a recommendation of approval from the city’s planning commission in January.
Online reactions to Beale’s withdrawal seem largely positive, and members of the anti-data center public Facebook group formerly called ‘Say NO to Coweta, Ok Data Center (Atlas Project)’ have been jubilant.
They have now turned their ire towards Coweta City Manager Julie Casteen, who angered many when an open records request revealed that she had said that anti-data center advocates were “just not very smart and can’t accept change.” Casteen later apologized.
The Facebook group has since been renamed to ‘FIRE JULIE CASTEEN (Formerly Say No).’
Both the City of Coweta and Beale tried unsuccessfully to address local opposition to the campus, and the pair made their own websites about Project Atlas in an attempt to answer frequently asked questions.
Beale Infrastructure, backed by prominent private credit 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.
Coweta is located southeast of Tulsa in northeastern Oklahoma. Most of the state’s data centers are clustered around Oklahoma City.
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