Marana will get the contested data center.
On Tuesday, Jan. 6, Marana town council voted unanimously to rezone two parcels of land, each about 300 acres, on Luckett Road, from R-144 (residential) to SP (specific plan). The vote opened the way for the parcels to be used by Beale Infrastructure to build a data center. Councilmember Herb Kai was excused from voting as his family owns one of the parcels.
Every seat was taken in council chambers, so an overflow room was opened. The nearly five-hour meeting began with a call to the public in which councilmembers are not allowed to comment or respond. Because there were so many speakers scheduled for the hearing portion of the meeting, speakers, who ordinarily get three minutes on the floor, were limited to two minutes.
A few of those who object to the proposed ICE detention center were the first to have their say, among them Rolande Baker.
“The reason I’m here today is to beg and plead with you that we do not open a detention center and we do not open a jail,” she said. “Neither of those are viable options for that building that MTC has.”
She was referring to the former Marana prison, now owned by Management and Training Corporation.
During council reports, Patti Comerford talked about an elderly woman who is now afraid to come to council meetings.
“I wanted to talk about something I’ve never seen in Marana and it saddens me …,” she said. “I had an 80-year-old woman write a report about how she felt about what’s going on in Marana. (She) wants to attend meetings, but she’s fearful. She’s fearful if she gets up and speaks, what might happen to her at the end of our meetings. That really saddens me that somebody does not feel safe in our town. We’ve never had that before.”
Comerford added that if anyone feels unsafe, tell the council so they may escort the person to their vehicle.
After the council reports the first item on the agenda was a vote on a Marana Water rate increase, which was passed. The extra monies will be spent on removing PFAs (forever chemicals that come from consumer plastics, industrial uses and firefighting foam) from Marana’s drinking water.
“We’re here to deliver safe and reliable drinking water that also constitutes taking out the contaminants in our water, which is a large portion of what the rate increases are supporting, delivering high quality services for today into the future,” she said.
Then it was time to get to the rezoning resolution hearing, which is why most people were there. Nearly 50 people representing opinions both for and against rezoning the property got up to speak, many of them union members who were eager for the data center project to get underway. As it’s been presented by Keri Silvyn, the attorney representing Beale Infrastructure, it is expected that over the course of the next 10 years the project will bring in $145 million to the town in tax revenues, $950,000 in impact fees — these are one-time only construction fees — 4,200 construction jobs and 400 permanent jobs. The permanent jobs would include engineers, administrative staff, janitorial staff and technicians.
The fire and school districts will also benefit, according to Silvyn, with the fire district up $15 million and the school district gaining $25 million over the next 10 years.
The data center will be air cooled, not water cooled, in accordance with Marana ordinance. Silvyn said because of this water usage on the properties will be reduced from its current agricultural use, according to Silvyn.
“As we’ve said before, Beale has heard this community in the region loud and clear and wants an air-based cooling technology with no consumptive water for cooling,” she said. “The data center ordinance that you adopted a year ago, and we thank you for doing that because you’re ready for this project or a project requires CMID (Cortaro-Marana Irrigation District) supply the nonpotable for the minimal industrial irrigation and fire suppression.
“The water usage today on this 600 acres for farming is about 2000 acre feet per year. The need once (the data center) is up and operational is about 40 acre feet per year. That’s not just coming from us. We’ve been working with CMID and you can see it in some of the letters and it’s in our application. It is our commitment to this project to do air-based cooling technology. This is a 98% reduction in water use for the 600 acres. The potable water use, again, will be, as Mr. (Jason) Angell said, is the town of Marana, and that will be for office type uses, domestic type uses.”
Angell is Marana’s development services director.
Not everyone agrees with this statistic.
Silvyn also reiterated Beale’s compliance with ordinances concerning emergency generator use and noise level compliance. Testing for noise levels would be performed by an audio engineer of Beale’s choosing as stated in the town’s ordinance.
“‘It would be at the developer’s cost that they have to conduct this, and they would have to convince the town that it is a qualified third party acoustic engineer,’” town attorney Jane Fairall read. “I guess in that sense, we do have the ability to veto the choice that they’ve picked, but those are the words that are in the ordinance, what I read there.”
After all the presentations, town attorney Jane Fairall spoke on behalf of Councilmember Herb Kai, who was the only member not present at the meeting.
“If I may, before we begin the public comment portion of the hearing, I just wanted to make a comment for the record about Councilmember Herb Kai not being present here tonight, that he does have a conflict of interest regarding these two rezoning applications,” she said. “He has declared that conflict. He has filed the appropriate paperwork with the town clerk’s office. He is one of the property owners of the Lockett Road South property. I just wanted to put that on the record since typically when we have conflicts of interest, if a councilmember is here, present, they would declare it from the dias and get down and leave. Since he’s not here, I wanted to do that in his place. He has not participated as a councilmember in any official capacity in any of the discussions or deliberations into these rezoning applications and obviously isn’t participating tonight in the public hearing or in the vote.”
Finally it was time to hear from the public. The difference between a call to the public and a public hearing is councilmembers are allowed to interact with the speaker. At times they did.
More than three dozen people in favor of the data center got up to speak, most, but not all, of them union members. A little more than a dozen spoke against the data center.
Matthew Rohen-Trapp was first. He said he appreciated all members of the council and their hard work but questioned Vice Mayor Roxanne Zielger about two $300 campaign contributions, one from Keri Silyn and the other from Rory Juneman, another attorney at Lazarus and Silvyn.
Ziegler answered him.
“Matthew, you called me out and said that I had taken a campaign contribution from Silvyn and Lazarus law company,” she said.
“Not from their company, but from the individual partners,” Rohen-Trapp said.
“Yes. that’s absolutely right,” Ziegler said. “You can find that, of course, as you guys did. It’s on our website, three clicks and you can get right to the financials for 2024 and many years back.
“First of all, Title 16, I believe it is, Title 16 is campaign finance. I encourage you and others in here to read about Title 16. It allows campaign contributions. I think across the country, even our presidents take campaign contributions.
“I take campaign contributions because I am retired. I make $40,000 a year. I worked for 30 years, have a savings, but I make $40,000 a year. I’m on a fixed income. Some of us and I would think a lot of us who run, and I know yourself and another individual are going to be running. Let me just say you may find yourself wanting a campaign contribution to help you run your campaign.”
Sue Ritz was up next.
“I’m a Marana town resident, a registered professional engineer and a veteran of 24 years in the Army National Guard,” she said. “Now, there have been statements made by Beale … and others that the water consumption for these data centers is greatly reduced because you’re not going to actually be irrigating fields. That does not address the amount of water that is consumed by the generating stations that provide the power to this data center. The coal fire stations are currently only operated seasonally.
“If this goes through, they’re not going to be able to do that.
“They’re going to have to keep that 903 megawatts of name plate power operating, the stations. I looked at their data, and I estimated that those stations consume 11,100 acre feet of water every year. That is not a positive in the water category when you are 900,000 acre feet in the deficit for cap water.”
The other request people had was for the council to hold back and let the voters of Marana decide.
“From what I have heard, there has been some progress made in making this a reasonable project to go forward,” Marana resident Perry Frahm said. “However, there seems to be still a number of issues that are unresolved and I feel that in regards to campaign contributions, there can be a, shall I say, lack of objectivity possible in here.”
“I would like to see not only a postponement of the vote to get all of the facts, but I’d also like to see if we could do this as a referendum and actually let the citizen voters decide this.
“It is our town, you are our elected representatives but there’s a lot of information here and I would like to propose looking into having this as a referendum so that the people, the town citizens can have their direct input into this very important decision.”
Keith Watkins, senior vice president for Rural Economic Development at the Arizona Commerce Authority, spoke in favor of the data center project.
“I’m here tonight to express our full support for Project Luckett and for Marana’s leadership in attracting this next generation digital infrastructure to your community.
“Data centers today are an important part of modern life, as we all know. They power health care, emergency services, cybersecurity systems and even small business tools that communities rely on every single day. In short, data centers are, in fact, critical infrastructure, just like roads, water, power and sewer.
“This project represents a major opportunity for marana to secure long term economic value for the community and the region. Over the first ten years, this project is projected to generate $407 million in combined state, county, and local tax revenue, including $145 million directly to the town of Marana.
“Beyond those revenues, the project brings good paying quality jobs for Arizona. That’s what we’re all about.”
Albert Villalpando talked about how building the data center in Marana would benefit the many union workers in the area.
“I’m a proud member of Local 359,” he said. “I am here today in strong support of Beale Infrastructure data center project because for working families like ours, projects like this are about more than development and their jobs, stability, staying employed, here at home.
“We want to focus a little bit about being at home. … 85 to 90% of our local members with Local 359 are working in the valley. That’s a two to three hour drive time one way, working 10-, 12-hour days and then doing the same commute back. That’s long. That’s 14- to 16-hour days on the road and at work and away from your families. The other 10 to 15% are either not working or working out of state.
“We need this project here in Marana. We need this project here in southern Arizona and I hope you approve this.”
After everyone had their say, Marana Town Council passed the rezoning resolution to much applause and congratulations.
A video recording and transcript of the meeting is available to watch at maranaaz.new.swagit.com/videos/371317.