Lakeland Freezes Data Centers on a 4-3 Vote, and the Pause Covers Project Swan

The Lakeland City Commission voted 4-3 on Monday to stop taking applications for new data centers and other giant electric users for the next 12 months, a decision that takes effect immediately and freezes Project Swan, the roughly 600,000-square-foot data center proposed near Old Tampa Highway and Wilkinson Road in west Lakeland. Applause broke out in the chamber when the vote was read.

Ordinance No. 26-018 blocks the city from accepting, processing or approving development permits, development orders, comprehensive plan amendments or utility service requests for any customer whose anticipated monthly peak electric demand hits 50 megawatts or more at a single location. That number is not local. It comes from Chapter 2026-65, Laws of Florida, which took effect July 1 and created the state's new "large load customer" category.

A city spokesperson confirmed Monday that the moratorium applies to Project Swan, the Ryan Companies proposal at 923 Wilkinson Road that drew months of packed public comment.

Who voted which way

Commissioner Guy LaLonde Jr. made the motion and Commissioner Terry Coney seconded it. Commissioner Chad McLeod and Mayor Sara Roberts McCarley joined them. Commissioners Stephanie Madden, Mike Musick and Ashley Troutman voted no.

The three dissenters said they wanted a pause too, just a narrower one. Musick said he supported taking a breath but objected to how the ordinance was written. Troutman argued smaller projects should keep moving through Lakeland's normal development review while staff studied the enormous power users, and said he was not asking colleagues to accept anything like the massive data center planned in Fort Meade, in south Polk County. Madden said a modest data center reusing an existing warehouse could generate fewer truck trips than another distribution center on the same site.

City Attorney Palmer Davis told commissioners data centers are not a listed use in Lakeland's development code, so staff already treats them as prohibited. He described the ordinance as a belt-and-suspenders move that firms up that position while clearer rules get written, and said the current code gives staff no defensible way to approve a small third-party data center while turning down a large one.

What is exempt, and what isn't

Server rooms, computer rooms and network equipment that support a business's own operations are carved out. A hospital can still add storage for medical records. The restriction bites when running a data center for outside customers is the business itself.

Data centers already lawfully operating in Lakeland can keep running. They cannot expand or intensify during the 12 months.

The freeze also reaches past the city line. It applies in unincorporated Polk County areas served by Lakeland's electric, water or wastewater utilities, which matters because roughly 70% of Lakeland Electric's service territory sits outside city limits. Lakeland cannot zone land out there. It can decide whether to run a power line to it.

The scale problem in one table

Utility staff spelled out how far outside Lakeland Electric's experience these requests fall.

Customer	Peak load
Lakeland's one existing data center	Under 0.5 MW
Largest single meter (a Publix complex)	About 18 MW
State "large load" threshold	50 MW
Project Swan at full buildout	Reported at 100 MW

That existing data center ranks 49th on the utility's list of its top 200 customers. Lakeland Electric has never had a customer show up asking for 50 or 100 megawatts at once, acting general manager Scott Bishop told commissioners, and he supported the pause. He said the year buys time to write policies on who pays for new substations and lines, what happens if a project is cancelled after that infrastructure is built, and how everyone else's bills are shielded from the cost.

All 16 residents who spoke Monday backed a pause or stronger protections. Speakers raised water use, generator noise, fire risk, farmland, utility rates, and how few permanent jobs a facility of that size actually produces. One cited a recent Georgia Tech study finding the economic gains from data centers are uneven and thinnest outside metro areas.

The cost question lands in October regardless. Commissioners approved a Lakeland Electric base rate plan on July 20 that raises rates 3.75% a year for four years starting Oct. 1, taking the monthly customer charge from $14 to $15.25.

What happens next

Over the next 12 months staff will study electric capacity, water demand, emergency response, environmental impacts, infrastructure cost recovery and land-use compatibility, then bring back recommended permanent rules. The city has not announced when those recommendations will reach the commission. The moratorium itself runs a year from Monday unless commissioners amend or repeal it sooner, and three of the seven have already said on the record that they want the language rewritten. The full ordinance text is posted with the city clerk's commission agenda materials.

More Lakeland coverage is always at Lakeland Community Website, and you can read more government and politics stories or catch up on what's coming to west Lakeland in our development coverage. Have a take on the vote, or live near Wilkinson Road? Join the conversation in our Community Forum.

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Header photo: Connor J. Williams / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)