LaGrange is trying to thread the needle between welcoming data center tax and power revenue and managing local backlash, and the council is split on how hard to dial up public scrutiny.
The new proposal locks all data centers into industrial zoning, adds 1,500-foot spacing and noise buffers, and restricts hyperscale facilities to heavy industrial, but the city only has two heavy industrial parcels and both are already occupied.
In practice, that means any hyperscale build will require rezoning, guaranteeing a public fight, and one council member flatly says heavy industrial rezonings for data centers likely won’t get approved.
Smaller sub-30,000-square-foot sites, similar to the city’s own legacy data center, could bypass public hearings if they meet industrial zoning, distance, noise, and power/water availability rules, which some council members oppose.
The political fault line is over whether every data center, including small ones, should need a special-use permit and council-level visibility, versus treating them like any other industrial load so deals can actually close.
Electricity sales are central: leadership frames the right kind of data center as a low-footprint, high-utility-use customer that backfills lost industrial load without hammering schools, roads, or public safety.
The moratorium on new data centers expires March 21, so whatever rules they choose will directly shape where and whether future GPU-heavy builds can land in LaGrange, making this article worth a close read for anyone modeling regional AI capacity.
Source: LaGrange Council still divided on special-use permits for data centers
