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An Inver Grove Heights City Council meeting ended with shouting and boos Monday night after council members delayed a move to pause construction of new data centers.

The city council was scheduled to have a final reading of a one-year moratorium on data center construction to allow time to study their impacts.

But council members decided to recess the meeting until 8 a.m. Friday to consider new information, which they said they’d just received.

As Mayor Brenda Dietrich recessed the meeting, residents loudly voiced their displeasure at the delay.

The council previously voted 3-2 to pass the moratorium. But city ordinance requires three readings of the moratorium before it can take effect.

Data centers are warehouses filled with computer servers that power cloud computing and artificial intelligence. More than a dozen large data centers have been proposed across Minnesota.

Heads back to City Council

Amid pushback from unions, industry 

A Florida-based developer, QLevr, is proposing to build a 54,000-square-foot data center on Carmen Avenue East in Inver Grove Heights. It’s considerably smaller than hyperscale data centers proposed around the state.

The facility would use a maximum of five megawatts of electricity and a closed-loop water cooling system.

QLevr's attorneys warned city officials in a letter of possible legal action if its decision isn't based on objective zoning laws.

Inver Grove Heights would join several other Minnesota cities that have passed a moratorium on data centers, including Minneapolis, Rosemount, Eagan and Carver.

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Kirsti Marohn

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The city council was scheduled to have a final reading of a one-year moratorium on data center construction. But council members decided to recess the meeting until Friday to consider new information.

Inver Grove Heights meeting erupts into shouts after data center moratorium delayed

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