Residents from the Chelsea Glenn area were fired up Tuesday night as they met face-to-face with a developer who wants to bring a data center into their backyards. So many wanted to speak that the line stretched from the lobby to the parking lot of the Hyatt Place hotel at 503 W. Garden of the Gods Road. 

The hotel’s meeting room reached capacity, meaning only 200 people could attend the two community meetings. The fire marshal was called in and had to turn people away. 

Those who made it in mainly expressed concerns about the data center’s water use, noise pollution and power requirements.

One man, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Mitch White, has lived in Colorado Springs for 30 years. He currently lives in the area off Centennial and worries about the cascading effects the data center will have.

“The impact on us will be more than significant … the noise levels, impact on the electrical grid, utilities continue to crank up our rates, and we are in a drought,” he said. “The last thing we need is something sucking up our precious resources.” 

Proposed by California-based Raeden, the data center will be used by an artificial intelligence company. Raeden’s founder, Jason Green, said he could not disclose the name of the company that will occupy the new data center, which he hopes will go into an old Intel chip fabrication plant at 1565 High Tech Way. 

“It’s a company that’s providing services and solutions into the internet that you’re all using on your cell phones today,” Green said, prompting a cacophony of protest from the crowd. “Here’s the deal: if the public was aware of every potential or attempt of business in any market, then no one would do any business.” 

Green estimated the company would employ 60 to 100 people.

While technically zoned to allow a data center, residents were not happy by the lack of clarity offered by city leadership, White said. 

“Raeden shouldn’t dictate what’s happening,” he added, lamenting that Raeden – not the city – was hosting the neighborhood meeting.

Water is a major concern in the western U.S., but Green said the proposed data center won’t require heaps of it. Residents wanted a gallon amount, and he told them on day one that the data center would need 200,000 gallons. Green said the company had actually forfeited some water rights because the original building was designed to use about one million gallons per day. 

But the tradeoff is power. By using a closed-loop system to cool the computers that will run the data center, thereby reducing water use, the power requirements, and residual heat, will increase. The data center is rated to use up to 50 megawatts, limited by a power purchase agreement Raeden signed with Colorado Springs Utilities. 

Green said this could drive down costs for users, despite the increased pressure on the base load. 

“Colorado Springs Utilities costs increase when they have customers that do not use power consistently. This building operates at a high efficiency, which means the power that we draw, we use it,” he said. “The more we use of the power we’ve been given, the more efficient (Utilities) operates, which lowers (Utilities’) cost.” 

Utilities representatives at the meeting could not immediately verify this.

Under the power purchase agreement, if Raeden doesn’t use the power it contracts for, it has to pay penalties. 

A lingering concern for many community members was the language Green used. One audience member pointed out that the data center will draw 50 megawatts of power “at the start,” which only includes phase one of the data center project.

“In the event, if Colorado Springs has more power, then we would like to use more power,” Green said. The audience member quickly countered, saying it’s enough power to provide for 180,000 homes, which is not necessarily true. 

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission estimates a coal-fired power plant producing one megawatt can power between 400 and 900 homes. Using this metric, the proposed data center would use as much power as 20,000 homes on the low end. On the high end, it’s 45,000. 

Colorado Springs may be home to as many as 600,000 people by 2040, up more than 100,000 from the current estimate of 494,000.