Lexington’s Planning Commission passed a development plan for the city’s Blue Sky industrial park Thursday. As part of the plan, consultants are suggesting ways the city can modernize its zoning regulations for industrial areas — including how it defines data centers.
“Lexington-Fayette County does not have a definition of a data center, and so we have recommended to actually write what that means and to put in place some use standards,” said Caleb Racicot, a consultant with TSW Design.
The Blue Sky Small Area Plan dictates how Lexington will develop an industrial park that was added into the city’s urban service boundary three years ago. But part of its development plan also includes more widespread recommendations for the city’s zoning ordinance.
As part of Racicot's recommendations, there would be two definitions for data centers in Lexington’s Zoning Ordinance. “Minor” data centers would be defined as under 50,000 square feet. “Major” data centers over 50,000 square feet would be prohibited from being constructed in industrial areas.
There is currently no set time frame for the planning commission to enact those zoning recommendations, according to Lexington Director of Planning Jim Duncan. The zoning amendment is still being developed.
But that also comes as the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council directed the commission to write policy for data centers across all of Fayette County in a vote last Tuesday. Duncan said they are== two separate items that will be discussed in tandem.
“We will look at the recommendations from the consultant, but then also see how we need to apply that across the board in the community as we're developing the data center regulations,” he said.
The council also unanimously voted to enact a moratorium on local data center development Tuesday. The moratorium, which is in place through Oct. 31, was enacted days after the company DartPoints announced it had acquired a data center space in north Lexington formerly owned by Lexmark. It plans to expand the property to accommodate cloud and AI computing, and potentially expand its capacity from 20-30 megawatts to 70 megawatts.
A public hearing on the council-directed zoning amendment is scheduled July 30.
