The Hermantown City Council voted unanimously on October 30 to approve the key local measures allowing Google’s proposed Hermantown data center to advance, clearing a development agreement, a special-use permit and a decommissioning provision, according to MPR News. The vote came after the council postponed decisions twice amid protests from residents of the city, which sits in a rural area outside Duluth, Minnesota.
Local approval, however, does not put a shovel in the ground. Three lawsuits remain pending against the project, according to the Star Tribune, and Google still needs sign-off from state utility regulators for the power contract that would feed the campus.
What the Hermantown data center would look like
The project covers more than 200 acres in a rural residential area and calls for three buildings totaling roughly 1.66 million to 1.7 million square feet, with each building larger than six football fields, as Gadget Review reported.
Facing sustained community opposition, Google trimmed the plan before the council voted. The company cut the campus from four buildings to three, capped building heights at 33 feet, and agreed to monitor private wells near the site.
Google dropped its $80 million tax-break request
Google also withdrew its request for up to $80 million in property-tax breaks. Without that abatement, the revised project is expected to generate approximately $3 million per year in property-tax revenue for Hermantown, according to MPR News.
A separate decommissioning agreement gives the city protections if construction is abandoned or if the facility eventually closes. That arrangement was reported to carry a value of approximately $210 million — a figure that addresses one of the recurring worries in data-center fights nationwide, namely who pays to clear the site if a hyperscale campus goes dark.
Power demand lands at the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission
The facility is projected to require up to 500 megawatts, placing a load on the regional grid far larger in consequence than the land-use question the council settled. Google needs approval from the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission for its power-supply contract with Minnesota Power, a state review entirely outside Hermantown’s control.
To put the demand in context, the Citizens Utility Board of Minnesota has estimated that 500 megawatts is roughly equivalent to the combined residential electricity demand of Minneapolis, St. Paul, Duluth and Rochester. The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission review will weigh grid capacity and the terms of the service agreement between Google and Minnesota Power, questions that reach well beyond city limits.
Energy demand from artificial-intelligence computing has become the central friction point in siting decisions across the country, with analysts warning that AI data centers could erode years of U.S. emissions progress if new load outpaces clean generation.
Three lawsuits over environmental review, zoning and 80 acres
The three pending lawsuits challenge the project’s environmental review, the city’s zoning process, and ownership of approximately 80 acres inside the proposed site, according to the Star Tribune. Each is a separate line of legal exposure, and the land-ownership dispute alone touches a meaningful share of the footprint.
Litigation, wetland permitting, land-ownership questions and the state utility review can each delay or reshape the campus independently. The practical effect of the October 30 vote is narrower than it may appear: the question has shifted from whether Hermantown would grant local permission to whether Google can satisfy everything else.
Protests, an 85-person cap and a near-midnight vote
Opposition shaped the schedule from the start. The council postponed its votes twice amid protests before finally acting on October 30, a meeting the city capped at 85 in-person attendees, with a virtual option also available. The session ran several hours of public comment and ended shortly before midnight.
Residents raised concerns about the project’s scale, noise levels, water use, environmental effects and potential impacts on property values, according to Tom’s Hardware. Some also criticized the in-person attendance cap and the way the process unfolded.
Council member John Geissler used his remarks after the vote to draw a line between the legal question in front of the council and the broader arguments surrounding it.
“What we’ve done tonight is not about AI. It’s not about big tech. It’s not about software. It’s about a project here in Hermantown, a land use application, and agreements that are associated with that,” he said, according to MPR News.
A likely reference point for Minnesota siting fights
The combination at play in Hermantown — substantial projected tax revenue, infrastructure demand of unusual scale and legal opposition that did not dissolve with the council’s approval — makes the decision a likely reference point for data-center debates elsewhere in Minnesota.
Communities facing similar proposals have produced a lopsided public record. A review of public comments on data-center projects found more than 90 percent were negative, a pattern echoed in the water-use, noise and property-value objections voiced in Hermantown.
For now, the Hermantown data center sits in an unusual position: locally permitted, legally contested and awaiting a state regulatory decision on power. The next milestones belong to the courts and to the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission rather than to the city council that spent months on the application.
