Charlotte City Council deadlocked 5-5 Monday night on whether to even schedule a public hearing about a temporary moratorium on new data center approvals. Mayor Vi Lyles broke the tie. She voted no. While the council was tying its own hands on procedure, a 2.5-million-square-foot data center campus is going up at 10800 University City Boulevard with up to 500 megawatts of power capacity — and under Charlotte's current zoning, the council had no role in approving it.
Three things to know.
1. The same drought asking you to skip lawn watering is the one a data center can use millions of gallons of water during.
Charlotte Water moved residents to voluntary restrictions on April 20 under Stage 1 of the Catawba-Wateree Low Inflow Protocol. South Charlotte sees this acutely — Ballantyne's mix of single-family homes with irrigation systems, HOA-managed common-area landscaping, and golf-adjacent neighborhoods all run on the same basin water now under conservation. Council Member Dimple Ajmera said at the dais that data centers at the scale of the University City facility "can use millions of gallons a day" of water and consume "tens of thousands of homes' electricity." Right now, no city ordinance limits how a new data center cools itself, recycles its water, or sources its power.
2. District 3's representative did not state a yes vote on the moratorium hearing.
Of the ten council members present, only seven publicly stated their position during floor debate. Three said yes (Ajmera, LaWana Slack-Mayfield, J.D. Mazuera Arias). Three said no (Ed Driggs, Malcolm Graham, Kimberly Owens). Council Member Joi Mayo, who represents District 3 — the district covering most of south Charlotte and Ballantyne — did not separately state her position. The vote ended 5-5 before the mayor's tie-breaker. Mayo's vote, whichever direction it went, was part of the count.
3. By-right zoning means south Charlotte already had no vote on a lot of big projects. This is the same logic.
Under Charlotte's current Unified Development Ordinance, data centers are allowed by-right in commercial, industrial, research-campus, mixed-use, and uptown-core districts. No special permit. No public hearing. No council vote. Ballantyne residents who have followed Faith in Housing, Crosland Southeast, or any of the contested rezonings of the past year know what a public hearing on a use looks like. By-right means the developer doesn't need one. The council's 5-5 vote was about whether to start a process that could change that for data centers. The answer, for now, is no.
The full story. The Charlotte Mercury has the complete piece — the four areas Ajmera's motion would have evaluated, the on-record yes/no positions, the City Attorney's memo on by-right zoning, and the June 8 window that's still open. Read it at cltmercury.com.
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