Pause Or Playbook? How Bay Area Cities Are Responding To Data Center Developments

Highlights

• Within weeks of California enacting seven new data center laws, San Francisco and Oakland temporarily paused data center approvals, while San Jose and Santa Clara proposed adoption of new local standards.
• For developers, the practical issues remain the same in each of the four cities: whether a project constitutes a "data center" within the meaning of the law, how the laws will affect the project's access to water and power, and what the project application needs to show.
• Key to viability and success will be understanding the precise requirements of each city at the earliest time possible, coming to the table with potential solutions and options and recognizing that, at this time of flux and learning, each new data center application is likely to have some bearing on the public's long-term perception of data centers and the municipality's overall permitting and land use process.