Until this week, League City’s former development code did not specifically identify data centers as a distinct use category, meaning a developer could potentially build a data center in League City by right.
City officials recently changed the development code to give the city more authority over whether a data center could be built in League City.
“There’s been a national discussion about data centers,” Mayor Nick Long said. “In doing some research about our own standards for data centers, [we] noticed that we really didn’t have anything that would prevent somebody from building a data center by right in certain pieces of property across League City.”
How it works
League City City Council voted unanimously at its Oct. 27 meeting to amend the city’s unified development code to require developers to secure a special use permit, which has to be approved by council, to build a data center in League City.
The city’s Planning and Zoning Commission voted unanimously at an earlier meeting on Oct. 19 to recommend the council adopt the changes, according to city documents.
After voting to approve the amendment, council voted 7-1 to approve the ordinance’s first and final reading, meaning council would not need to vote a second time at a Nov. 17 meeting to pass the ordinance.
Updating the code would allow the city to review proposals to build data centers in League City on a case-by-case basis in a public setting, Long said.
The discussion
Council member Tom Crews cast the sole vote against adopting the changes on first and final reading, noting he wanted the city to add clearer regulatory language to address a potential data center’s impact on the community, such as water use or noise impact, before the second reading.
However, some council members disagreed with Crews’ suggestion and said creating too clear standards would amount to having a “checklist” for developers to satisfy in order to move a project forward.
“There is a high potential for change in what a data center is and how it operates,” council member Chad Tressler said at the meeting. “Trying to preplan around that change would be problematic.”
In other news
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which regulates the state's air quality, water quality and waste management, has shut down its electronic filing portal for certain environmental permit applications, an agency spokesperson confirmed Oct. 22, according to previous reporting by Community Impact.
The shutdown comes after watchdog groups said the agency violated an order from Gov. Greg Abbott by processing nearly three dozen permit applications for data center projects.
