(COLDWATER) - A special meeting was held Monday night to get information on data centers.
The Coldwater City Council, City Planning Commission and the CBPU Board of Directors held the joint meeting. Member of neighboring Township boards and the community also attended.
Coldwater Mayor Tom Kramer started off by saying there has been little support to have data centers and they want to create policies to make it difficult for data centers to come to the area.
The main speaker was Jean Hardy, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Media & Information at Michigan State University. He started off his presentation by explaining that data centers are physical buildings that house network computer servers used for remote storage, processing or distribution of data. Data centers have basically been around since the advent of network internet communication so over 50 years.
Hardy says the data centers are larger and use more energy than they were just a decade ago.
Hardy goes on to share why there seems to be community resistance to data centers recently.
Hardy says the pushback is because the data centers are being proposed in places that never had to think about these types of developments before. Over the last 30 to 40 years, once data centers got larger and couldn't be put in office buildings, they were located in office parks or industrial zones or warehouses. (LISTEN ABOVE)
Audience members asked questions following Hardy's presentation. Hardy answered any of the questions directed towards him.
No action was taken during the meeting.