LOXAHATCHEE, FL — Palm Beach County commissioners voted 5-1 Wednesday to deny a proposed expansion of the Project Tango data center near the Arden community and Saddle View Elementary School, siding with residents who packed the county chambers and rejecting a staff recommendation for approval.
The vote came after nearly 12 hours of testimony and public comment at a zoning public hearing that stretched from 9:30 a.m. until adjournment at 9:50 p.m. The motion to deny was made without prejudice, meaning the applicant is not permanently barred from returning, but no new application can be filed until the county adopts a data center moratorium ordinance and new regulations. That ordinance is scheduled to come back before the Board of County Commissioners in August.
Commissioner Joel G. Flores, who made the motion, said the applicant had not demonstrated the project was appropriate for the site.
"Based on the competent and substantial evidence presented into the record today, I find that the applicant has not demonstrated that the proposed project is compatible with the surrounding areas and that it adequately protects the public health, safety and welfare," Flores said.
The application
The application, ZV/DOA-2025-01602, sought a development order amendment to the previously approved master plan for the 202.67-acre Economic Development Center Multiple Use Planned Development. The site sits roughly 3.7 miles west of Seminole Pratt Whitney Road on the north side of Southern Boulevard, next to the Florida Power & Light West County Energy Center.
The proposal would have allocated additional square footage under the site's existing 2,020,000-square-foot cap. According to the staff presentation, the request added:
- 280,000 square feet of data and information processing
- 148,000 square feet of minor utility
- 1,146,564 square feet of warehouse
Applicant PBA Holdings, Inc. was represented by Enrique Tomeu, attorney Brian Seymour of Carlton Fields P.A. and consultants from WGI. Project manager Ernie Cox told commissioners the completed project would be a $34.5 billion asset generating an estimated $561 million in property tax revenue at buildout in six to seven years.
Palm Beach County planning staff had recommended approval subject to a lengthy list of conditions covering noise, generator testing, battery placement, building height along the eastern property line, lighting, water quality and stormwater. On July 2, the county's Zoning Commission voted 6-0 to recommend denial.
Mayor Sara Baxter recused herself
District 6 Mayor Sara Baxter, whose district includes the Arden community, recused herself before the hearing began. Baxter said she had made public statements against the project and had been asked to step aside to avoid putting the county at risk of litigation.
"No matter how much I want to stay here and no matter how much I want to fight, I believe it is my duty and obligation to not put the county at risk of a very large lawsuit," Baxter said before passing the gavel to Vice Mayor Marci Woodward.
Woodward presided for the remainder of the hearing.
Applicant framing
Seymour told commissioners the project's design, setbacks and closed-loop cooling system had been vetted by nationally recognized experts on noise, water use and public health, and that the staff conditions addressed community concerns.
"We've gone above and beyond from what the code requires," Seymour said. "At the end of the day, in this quasi-judicial process, all of the evidence, all of it, is consistent with the code."
Cox described the site's location adjacent to the West County Energy Center and multiple FPL substations as "one of the most connected electrical pieces of property in South Florida." Applicant engineer James Richie testified that the closed-loop cooling system would use approximately 650,000 gallons for its initial fill and require an estimated 100,000 gallons per day of potable water at buildout, less than the daily use of the Arden community.
Dr. Robert Conaughey, an occupational and environmental medicine physician and Harvard Medical School faculty member retained by the applicant, testified he did not identify any adverse public health impact based on the noise modeling.
Resident opposition
Residents filled the chambers and an overflow room at the Vista Center. A combined presentation by the Arden HOA and the Western Palm Beach Community Alliance argued the proposal is materially different from the traditional server-farm data center approved on the site in 2016, and that it should not be classified as light industrial because its impacts extend beyond the property line.
Attorney Christina Reichard, presenting for the opposition, said AI data centers began coming online only in the 2020s and require 17 to 35 times the power of a traditional server farm.
Cecelia Ward, an AICP-certified planner and president of JC Consulting, testified that the project does not qualify as light industrial under the county's own definitions.
"If you cause impacts on adjoining properties, you're heavy industrial. You're not light industrial, that's for sure. And you are not permitted in the EDC land use," Ward said.
Corey Counterman, who initiated a petition against the project, said more than 11,000 people had signed. Palm Beach County Democratic Party State Committeeman Howard Richmond told the board the county party had passed a resolution 103-3 in support of a data center moratorium.
Named residents from the Arden community spoke in opposition throughout the afternoon and evening.
"We chose Arden because of its quality of life, its open spaces, peaceful surroundings, family atmosphere, and our beautiful new Saddle View Elementary," said Deborah Anderson, an Arden homeowner and 30-year real estate professional.
"There's a reason states are banning AI centers," said Jamie Ball, an Arden resident. "We are the families who invested our savings and our homes because we believed this community would remain a safe healthy place."
Raymond Puinella, an Arden HOA board member speaking as a resident, told commissioners the vote extended beyond the single project. "You are voting on the precedent to allow a hyperscale AI data center to be built anywhere in the county," Puinella said.
A small number of speakers urged approval. Sean Strawbridge, a District 3 homeowner and business owner, said the project's projected tax contribution could help offset potential state homestead property tax changes. Former state legislator Jamie Grant, who said he helped negotiate Florida's 2017 data center tax exemption, spoke in his individual capacity in support.
Board discussion
Woodward said the volume of conditions the board would have needed to attach to make the project compatible with its neighbors reinforced her view that the use did not fit the existing category.
"How many conditions did we work through this process? Which gives me extreme pause on doing anything like this," Woodward said. "The fact that this was approved before, and now we are trying to piece it together, these uses are not compatible."
Commissioner Gregg K. Weiss said the record contained substantial evidence, including expert and public testimony, that the use would generate continuous low-frequency noise and other impacts extending beyond the property line, and that the proposal was inconsistent with the county's comprehensive plan and the Everglades Area Protection standards.
Commissioner Bobby Powell Jr. thanked staff for the analysis and said the vote was not a reflection on their work. Commissioner Maria Sachs, who represents District 5, said the applicant's experts had not been able to point her to a data center of the proposed scale that they had personally visited and tested inside Florida.
Commissioner Maria Marino cast the lone dissenting vote and said she believed the conditions negotiated by staff and agreed to by the applicant were sufficient. "I think with all the conditions that were put in place and all the conditions that were agreed to, the staff did their job," Marino said.
Litigation and process
The hearing also surfaced a pending civil lawsuit filed against the county and PBA Holdings by an owner within the master plan. Aaron Byrne's law firm filed the case on Friday, July 10, according to statements made during the hearing. Multiple commissioners said they were served on Monday, July 13, after having already met with counsel for that party earlier the same day.
A judge denied a motion for a temporary injunction seeking to halt Wednesday's hearing, the county attorney's office told the board. The county attorney's office also confirmed that a statutory 180-day deadline to process the application had lapsed in April, and that both parties agreed to extensions that ran through Wednesday's hearing.
What happens next
Because the denial was made without prejudice, PBA Holdings is not required to wait a full year before reapplying, as would be the case with a denial with prejudice. However, county staff confirmed that the county's Zoning in Progress designation, adopted earlier in July, prohibits any new data center application from being filed while the moratorium ordinance is under development. A draft moratorium ordinance is scheduled to return to the BCC in August.
The county's underlying 2016 approval for 2,020,000 square feet of Economic Development Center uses remains in place. Under existing code, several administrative processes could still allow the property owner to modify the mix of uses within that cap without returning to the board.
Broader context
Wednesday's decision comes as Florida and other states grapple with how to zone and regulate hyperscale AI data centers, a use that did not exist in its current form when Palm Beach County originally approved the underlying Economic Development Center in 2016. Florida House Bill 707, passed in August 2025, raised the critical IT load threshold for the state's data center sales tax exemption to 100 megawatts, effectively directing the exemption toward large-load and hyperscale facilities.
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