BRIGHTON, Colo. — Brighton residents are pushing back against plans for a massive data center complex near their homes, uniting across political and ideological lines to demand city leaders halt the project.
Neighbors in northeast Brighton discovered plans for a 2.5 million-square-foot data center complex through a public records request to the city. Documents detail two pre-application conference meetings held in January and July of last year between planning firm Dewberry and city officials. The records outline a proposal to build eight two-story data center buildings on land near County Road 4 and 50th Avenue, each approximately 315,000 square feet.
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On Saturday, the Adams County Democratic Socialists of America and the organization Bridge to Brighton held a neighborhood meeting where residents gathered to coordinate their opposition and urge city leaders to stop the plans.
Lynee Graves, whose property sits directly on the project's boundary, said she was caught off guard by the news of the proposed data centers.
"I feel very deceived by the City of Brighton," she said. "I'm not opposed to data centers. Let me just say that, but not here in a residential area."
Graves said her concerns center on water use and noise levels from the facility.
"How do I know that they're not going to dry out my aquifer or drill into the same aquifer that we have here in our neighborhood?" she said.
Brighton resident Katie Strawn, who lives near the site, said she only learned about the project about a week ago and was still processing the full scope of the proposal at the neighborhood meeting.
"I didn't realize until today... that they were two stories and eight of them. I mean, I don't even know what we need that many for," she said. "My biggest concern is the health of my family. I mean they could build whatever they want, as long as it goes away and is not affecting my family."
Strawn said she does not feel city leaders are looking out for her or her neighbors' best interests.
"I don't feel represented, nor do I feel protected by them," she said.
During Saturday's meeting, organizers walked residents through the next steps in the approval process for the data center project, including a planning commission review before advancing to a city council vote. But the plans may not make it that far. Brighton Mayor Pro Tem Peter Padilla told Denver7 he wants to pass a 90-day moratorium on data center development at the next Brighton City Council meeting on October 6 in response to community pushback.
He acknowledged the tension between the technology's growing role in daily life and residents' concerns about where such facilities are built.
"We have a number of complicated issues happening at the same time. Artificial intelligence is incredibly valuable and incredibly scary," said Padilla. "Data centers are a necessary part of business. We use them in everything that we do, day in and day out. But they're big, and we do want to put high demand, high traffic functions in the right places in the community."
