Florida Voted NO on a Data Center Nobody Is Allowed to Name

Our Take

Credit to the US Data Centers / Land4DataCenter channel for rounding up eight buildout stories in one clip, but the Citrus County item is the one worth sitting with. A developer asks a county to rezone 1,356 acres in Holder, Florida for up to 500 megawatts of load, and when residents ask the obvious question — for whom? — the answer is an NDA. Not a company name, not a use case, just 'trust us.' Two hundred people showed up anyway and sat through nine hours to say no, and the planning commission agreed, unanimously. That's not a fringe reaction. That's what happens when a community is asked to rezone a third of its land area for a facility it isn't allowed to know anything about.

This is the pattern we track everywhere: the utility interconnection studies, the water permits, the tax abatement paperwork all get filed under a shell LLC while the actual hyperscaler stays invisible until the site is already zoned and graded. NDAs protect the developer's negotiating leverage, not the ratepayers who'll eventually cover new transmission and substation costs, or the neighbors whose wells and property values are on the line. Citrus County's planning commission did what a lot of boards don't — it treated 'we can't tell you' as a reason to slow down, not speed up. The real vote is July 14 with the County Commission, and unanimous recommendations from planning boards get overturned more often than people think.

If you want to see whether a nameless mega-project is heading for your own county, check our facility map for what's already permitted or pending near you, and if a hearing like this is coming to your town, our take-action page has the basics on how to actually show up and be heard before the zoning is a done deal.