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.
“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.
The council is set to vote on the moratorium June 9.