Google’s Hermantown data center clears vote, not power review

Google won unanimous land-use approval on Friday, October 30 for a proposed three-building, 1.66-million-square-foot data center on just over 200 acres and a 500-megawatt power load near Duluth.

The site sits in a rural residential area outside Duluth. MPR News reported that the vote followed at least two postponed council meetings and hours of public opposition. The approval settles local land use, not the project’s power requirements, environmental review or court challenges.

What did the council approve?

The council approved a development agreement, a special use permit and provisions requiring decommissioning if construction stops or the facility eventually closes. The council capped attendance at 85 people and livestreamed the meeting. It ended shortly before midnight, drawing criticism of the attendance limit.

Critics challenged the cap. Council member John Geisler said the vote concerned “a project here in Hermantown, a land use application, and agreements that are associated with that.” His statement narrowed the decision’s legal subject, rather than endorsing the project’s scale or power demand.

The report identifies no construction start date, financing total, commercial customer commitments or projected operating costs for the Hermantown project at this stage of review.

What changed before the vote?

Google reduced its initial plan from four buildings to three. It capped the buildings at 33 feet and agreed to monitor nearby private wells. Each building would still be larger than six football fields.

The company also withdrew its request for up to $80 million in property-tax breaks. Hermantown expects about $3 million in annual property tax from the revised arrangement, according to MPR News. A separate decommissioning agreement has a stated value of $210 million.

The $3 million figure remains an expectation, not a collected total. The report does not itemize the decommissioning agreement’s funding, security or payment schedule. Nor does it show what assessment changes produced the revised tax estimate.

Supporters cited the reduced footprint, well monitoring and financial terms as evidence of concessions. Opponents said those changes did not answer whether such a large development belonged in the area. Neither the reduced footprint nor the tax revision resolves the opponents’ central objection, which concerns the scale and suitability of the site itself for this neighborhood.

What still blocks construction?

Hermantown’s vote does not authorize immediate construction. The Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy and Stop the Hermantown Data Center have filed three lawsuits challenging the zoning process, land ownership and the environmental review.

Google also needs Minnesota Public Utilities Commission approval for power consumption, despite its agreement with Minnesota Power. The Citizens Utility Board of Minnesota compares the roughly 500-megawatt requirement with the combined electricity demands of homes in Minneapolis, St. Paul, Duluth and Rochester.

That scale makes grid approval a gating issue, not a footnote to the zoning debate. The report gives no electricity rate, capacity allocation or Hermantown construction schedule, and it does not identify the generation units behind the Minnesota Power agreement. Approval of the local permits therefore does not establish when construction can start or how much power the facility can draw.

What does the wider dispute show?

Other data-center disputes show why power and zoning have become separate tests. Resident objections have centered mainly on noise, water consumption and property values.

• In Alabama, residents failed to halt a 50-megawatt Bitcoin mining facility in August despite local moratoriums, exposing gaps in the state’s zoning rules.
• In Pennsylvania, NorthPoint Development faced resistance to a proposed 1,300-acre data center despite an offer of $10,000 to thousands of nearby households.
• In Michigan, MPR News reported that the OpenAI Stargate facility received approval last year for a 1.4-gigawatt power supply, while construction started in June 2026 despite objections from local residents.

These cases show that tax concessions, public commitments and even approved power-supply plans do not guarantee community consent for large data-center projects in the United States.

Google also pursues a separate data center near Pine Island, close to Rochester. That proposal now faces a more extensive environmental review following a legal settlement. The Hermantown project still faces a pending state review and three court challenges before construction can proceed.

The next test is whether Google secures state power approval and survives the three lawsuits, because the Hermantown vote did not resolve the site’s 500-megawatt demand, environmental review or legal status.