Minneapolis data center rules: 150,000 sq ft cap heads to vote

A Minneapolis City Council committee on Monday, 9 November 2026, advanced rules that would allow new data centres only inside existing buildings in two downtown zoning districts and cap the space for servers and computing equipment at 150,000 square feet. The full council is scheduled to vote on Thursday, 12 November 2026. The vote comes as the city's six-month moratorium on new data centres approaches its expiry on 21 November. During the same debate, the council did not approve an overlay district that would have required each future data-centre project to win council approval.

Data centres, the large buildings full of servers that run cloud services and artificial intelligence, have become one of the fastest-growing kinds of construction in the world. They also use a great deal of electricity and, in many designs, water for cooling. That has turned what used to be a technical planning matter into a political fight in many cities, as residents worry about power bills, water use, noise and land, while businesses and city officials weigh jobs and tax income.

Minneapolis is a useful example because it is trying to write permanent rules rather than simply say yes or no. Its approach limits data centres to existing buildings downtown, which avoids new campuses on open land and keeps them out of residential neighbourhoods, and it puts a hard ceiling on how much server space each can hold. The gap between the three proposals on the table, 175,000, 150,000 and 50,000 square feet, shows how much room there is for disagreement about how large is too large.

For India, which is in the middle of its own data-centre building boom around Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad and other cities, the Minneapolis debate is a preview of questions Indian states and city bodies are likely to face: where such buildings may go, how much power and water they may draw, and how much say local residents get. Indian technology and real-estate companies building data centres for global clients may also find that their customers' home cities are tightening rules, which can shift demand towards locations with clearer policies.

Peepals calculation: The committee's 150,000 square feet cap is about 14% smaller than the 175,000 square feet city staff proposed ((175,000 − 150,000) ÷ 175,000 ≈ 0.14) and three times the Planning Commission's 50,000 square feet (150,000 ÷ 50,000 = 3). In metric terms, 150,000 square feet is about 13,900 square metres (150,000 × 0.0929 ≈ 13,935). Our calculation from the reported figures.

Short-term: If the full council approves the rules on 12 November, data-centre projects in Minneapolis will have a clear but narrow path before the moratorium ends on 21 November. If it does not, the city would face the moratorium's expiry without permanent rules in place.

Long-term: The rules would shape how much computing capacity can be built inside the city and could push larger projects to suburbs or other states. Other cities debating data centres are likely to study the Minneapolis model.

Who is affected: Minneapolis residents and businesses, data-centre developers and cloud companies, electricity and water utilities, and, indirectly, technology firms in India and elsewhere that build or rent data-centre capacity for US clients.

What to watch next: The full Minneapolis City Council vote scheduled for Thursday, 12 November 2026, and the moratorium's expiry on 21 November 2026.

Questions and Answers