Nashville Zoo pushes back on 1.6-acre data center build near animal habitats — Zoo says it planned to use lot for education and conservation center

What's a common characteristic of clouded leopards, Komodo dragons, and Sumatran tigers? Their habitats are all close to data centers — at least, if the proposal by DC Blox's to build a facility right next to the Nashville Zoo comes to pass. The 1.6-acre facility (69,000 sqft.) buildout is in the permit stage, but already raising more than a few issues both with the zoo itself and concerned Nashville residents, as evidenced by an online petition that counts over 322,000 signatories as of this writing.

The Nashville Zoo published a post in its blog detailing its major concerns. Besides the obvious concern about the power draw and its impact on the local grid, the zoo claims the facility could add to noise and light pollution, as well as lower the water quality in the surrounding areas. Altogether, those factors might have a negative impact on a number of hosted species and breeding programs, including the zoo's famous clouded leopards, animals "notoriously sensitive to any mechanical noise."

Nashville Zoo CEO Rick Schwartz reportedly said the entity was looking to use part of the 23.5-acre lot in question for an education and conservation center and that it was in talk for years with current owners MarketStreet Enterprises to buy part of the property for that purpose. MarketStreet's website lists the Nashville Zoo as one of its current tenants.

Technical details appear to be relatively sparse, but the datacenter would draw an estimated 50 MW of power from the local grid and reportedly include its own power substation. The 1.6-acre figure would hold the build's first phase, a relatively small parcel out of a 23.5-acre lot. DC Blox claims the project would use "closed-loop or waterless" cooling and comply with all local ordnances.

While 50 MW is definitely a lot of power, it's not anywhere in the same ballpark as that required by the vast majority of AI datacenters. This could mean the Nashville datacenter might be a "standard," relatively inoffensive co-location facility, keeping in theme with DC Blox's other operations. The proposed area is also quite compact in comparison to thousand-acre constructions demanding tens of gigawatts. Nashville already hosts another couple dozen datacenters, though none with a plan to pull up to 50 MW from the grid.

As an example, DC Blox's Birmingham facility does in fact use air cooling, and could draw up to 60 MW of power when fully built out. Having said that, the firm's website claims its operations are "AI-ready," meaning that the power and cooling requirements could rise in time, though theoretically such expansions would require additional permits. For its part, DC Blox says the datacenter would "not be an AI factory placing a burden on local resources," and further noted that the area had an existing permit for a datacenter, though there appear to be no records that such a facility was ever actually built.

Notably, while there appear to be no city-specific laws regarding datacenters, Tennessee law at least requires that datacenters pay for any grid infrastructure upgrades. Nashville's leadership is nevertheless considering adding restrictions to new datacenter investments, including but not limited to water, power, and noise regulations. Those would even ban buildouts larger than 500,000 sqft altogether.

The project is only in the permit stage, and in an odd spot at that. Local law generally requires that only land owners can apply or support a building permit, and yet DC Blox filed one while not yet owning the area, which is currently being sold by MarketStreet Enterprises. There's no confirmation on whether MarketStreet has co-signed or authorized the filing. Nashville Mayor Freddie O'Connell reportedly called the application "unusual" and is asking the Metro's legal department to look further into the situation.

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