Middle Tennessee cities consider limits on data center construction

Added: 2026-06-07

[00:00:00]The push to limit data centers has hit Middle Tennessee. Cities from McMinnville all the way to Metro Nashville have special meetings this week talking about limits on AI centers.

[00:00:09]It comes as people across the country are talking about issues with these AI data centers including pollution and use of water and power. I found out Metro Nashville didn't have any zoning restrictions about when and where data centers are built. Data Center map says there's already 27 of them in the Nashville area and there's plans to possibly build one down by the zoo and also at Fisk University. We talked with people down by the zoo who say they had no idea this was being proposed and they're really concerned the impact it'll have in their neighborhood.

[00:00:36]>> Try to protect our interest and keep our neighborhood a a residential neighborhood, not an industrial complex.

[00:00:41]>> Communities are concerned about this and rightfully so. I think we've seen a lot of the harms that these have done both in here in Tennessee outside Memphis and across the country.

[00:00:49]>> That's Metro Council member Rollin Horton. He's the one that wrote the bill that will create Nashville's first ever zoning for data centers. The bill creates four different types of data centers based on how big they are.

[00:00:59]>> So big hyper scale type data centers, those are more than 500,000 square feet, that's bigger than nine football fields.

[00:01:05]Those are banned in Davidson County if this passes.

[00:01:08]>> And before any construction starts on a data center, there will have to be community meetings and a lot of different rules followed to make sure it doesn't impact the neighborhood. Those rules include making sure it has a closed loop cooling system, there's enough electricity in Nashville to handle it, and also there won't be any pollution either noise or into the air from the data center. This petition that was just started already has thousands of signatures opposing a data center in McMinnville. City officials told me they haven't had any permits filed but a company just last week said that they're looking to get financing to build a data center in the area. That sparked a special meeting being held on Wednesday night where city officials are going to consider banning more than just data centers. They also want to stop anyone from opening a Bitcoin mining facility or microchip factory. And in the Cedar Hill community of Robertson County, they're looking to vote on a very similar proposal. The mayor sent me this ahead of their meeting this week where he plans to introduce a two-year ban on any of these data facilities. He announced the proposal after a similar facility was announced for Franklin, Kentucky just over the border and it concerned a lot of people.