SEATTLE — A new data center is planned for construction in the heart of downtown Seattle in spite of the city council’s efforts to stop such projects.
It is proposed for the former Bed Bath & Beyond location at the Corner of Third and Virginia, which now houses an art gallery and music venue. The plan would see the existing building demolished.
“Could we find a place for the arts?” Candice McGarvey said. “Could we start combining buildings in ways that are more efficient for everybody?”
Renderings submitted to the city in May describe the planned structure as six stories tall and featuring a research lab, commercial space and a data center.
KIRO 7 spoke to people who said they are fine with the project as long as it is eco-friendly.
“I think they need to think about the infrastructure around it. How can they create it as a net positive for their ecological footprint?” McGarvey said. “Because they are doing it in other places. It requires some money and some ingenuity and more time.”
The permits specify it would be a co-location data center, which means servers would be rented or leased out to companies and organizations. It would be operated by Digital Realty, the company behind the data center inside the Westin Building Exchange a few blocks away.
A Digital Realty spokesperson said in a statement:
“We are currently conducting due diligence and exploring what a potential development could look like. At this stage, our thinking points toward demolishing the existing structures to make way for a new data center facility, a use the site has previously supported in part. We’re committed to engaging with the local community as plans progress and see this as a necessary step toward delivering significant long-term investment and skilled jobs for Seattle.”
“We live in a computer age and if you want to keep up, you better be ready to have a data center,” Paul Moore, who lives nearby, said.
But not everyone is in favor of data centers. On Wednesday, the Seattle City Council’s land use and sustainability committee unanimously voted in favor of a one-year moratorium on new data centers, citing concerns around noise pollution, e-waste, power use and more.
“The whole moratorium is a temporary issue,” Eddie Lin, the committee’s chair, said. “We know at the end of the day that we need to come up with permanent regulations for all of this, permanent definitions.”
A spokesperson for the city’s Department of Construction and Inspections said if all the paperwork and permits for the proposed data center are in place before the moratorium is put in place, the project can still move ahead.
A Digital Realty spokesperson said in a statement:
“Digital Realty has called Seattle home for 20 years, and our commitment to the city is reflected in the infrastructure we operate every day. The project we’re currently assessing would be a highly connected, network-dense facility, not an AI data center. It will serve hundreds of businesses and support the kind of critical services that residents and communities across Seattle rely on every day to keep neighborhoods, businesses, and essential services running. We’ve filed our Master Use Permit application through established, City-approved permitting pathways as part of a standard permitting process applicable to every project in the City and will continue to engage constructively with the City Council – as well as the community – as that process unfolds."
The council is set to vote on the moratorium June 9.
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