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The city of East Lansing is instituting a moratorium on data centers while it evaluates its zoning ordinances.
That means the city won’t be able to consider or approve any prospective data center proposals for the next six months.
East Lansing City Council members voted unanimously Tuesday to adopt the moratorium.
But Councilmember Kerry Ebersole Singh said she worried about forgoing potential opportunities, arguing data centers could diversify the city’s tax base in a meaningful way and could come with other benefits.
“Some of the data centers are willing to do some pretty significant community benefit packages,” Singh said.
Singh said the potential benefits are especially notable as East Lansing starts budget season facing a significant deficit.
City staff agreed to notify City Council members if there are any informal inquiries from possible data center developers.
City Council members could then discuss lifting or shortening the moratorium.
The city of Mason recently took a similar approach, instituting a moratorium while working on an ordinance to create a new zoning framework for data centers that would regulate things like noise emissions.
But Mason City Council members voted Monday to repeal the product of those efforts after the zoning changes were met with pushback from community members who feared they could encourage data center development.
A group of Mason residents initiated a petition to campaign to hold a referendum on the measure.
Mason Mayor Russell Whipple said repealing the ordinance, rather than waiting for it to go to a vote, gives the city more flexibility.
“If we wait for the vote, then we wouldn’t be able to do anything in the next five months, basically, because it’d be suspended,” Whipple said.
A hyperscale data center developer has been looking into purchasing land in or near Mason, the Lansing State Journal reported.
East Lansing is not currently considering any data center proposals.
