Hermantown council gives final approval to Google data center after protests delay vote twice

The Hermantown City Council voted unanimously late Friday to approve the final major local agreements for a Google data center, ending a week in which protests twice forced the vote to be postponed.

According to MPR News, the decision followed four hours of public testimony and about an hour of council discussion, and the meeting wrapped up just before midnight. The council approved a development agreement, a special use permit and a decommissioning plan for the 1.7 million-square-foot facility, which is slated for more than 200 acres in a rural residential part of Hermantown, a city just outside Duluth in northeast Minnesota.

A vote postponed twice

The council was originally scheduled to act on Monday but canceled that session after roughly two consecutive hours of chanting and protests outside the council chambers, MPR News reports. The meeting was moved to Tuesday and then to Friday. For the rescheduled session, the city capped attendance at 85 people, closed an overflow room that had been open for earlier meetings, and offered a livestream plus advance email comments instead.

The grassroots group Stop the Hermantown Data Center had repeatedly asked the city to move meetings to a larger venue. One resident, Brian Bergeron, questioned how limiting attendance and making people wait outside in the elements squared with representative government. Council member John Geissler defended the approvals, saying the decision was about a land-use application and its associated agreements rather than AI, big tech or software. Most people who spoke opposed the project, though supporters also testified.

Concessions trimmed the project

Google made several concessions in the weeks before the vote. It withdrew a request for up to $80 million in property tax relief; the project is now expected to generate roughly $3 million a year in property tax revenue for Hermantown. The company also agreed to monitor private wells near the development, cut the campus from four buildings to three and capped building height at 33 feet — though each building would still cover more ground than six football fields, according to MPR News.

A $210 million decommissioning agreement, which protects the city if the data center is abandoned or never completed, drew praise from supporters. Resident Eric Palmer called it evidence that Google intends to be a long-term, responsible neighbor. Opponents were unmoved. Richard Hilton of Hermantown argued the company had changed as little as it legally could while claiming to have listened, and accused the council of representing a corporation instead of its citizens.

Lawsuits and a utility review remain

Friday's resolutions are the last major local approvals the data center needs, but the project is not yet certain. Three lawsuits are pending, challenging its environmental review, the city's process for changing zoning laws and the ownership of the land where the facility would sit. City attorney Christopher Virta said none of those issues prevented the council from moving ahead.

Separately, the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission still must approve an electric service agreement between Google and Minnesota Power. The facility is expected to require 500 megawatts of electricity — an amount the Citizens Utility Board of Minnesota compares to the combined power needed for all the homes in Minneapolis, St. Paul, Duluth and Rochester.

Google is also planning a large data center near Pine Island, outside Rochester, which will now go through a more extensive state-supervised environmental review under a lawsuit settlement.

A national flashpoint

Data center proposals have become a sharply contested political issue across the United States over the past year, MPR News reports, with polling showing voters in both major parties oppose having them built in their communities and the issue pushing residents to run for local office. Hermantown is no exception: three first-time candidates are competing for two open city council seats, spurred largely by the data center fight.

Why it matters

Hermantown shows how the infrastructure buildout behind cloud computing and AI is being decided less in Washington than in small city council chambers, where zoning and land-use law give residents their main point of leverage. It also shows the limits of a local green light: with three lawsuits pending and a state utility review still required, a unanimous council vote does not guarantee construction. And the 500-megawatt power requirement illustrates why grid capacity is becoming the defining constraint, and a growing source of conflict, as data centers spread into rural communities.