Chandler’s council unanimously rejected a $2.5 billion AI data center on a 40‑acre site already ringed by existing facilities, despite federal pressure to accelerate AI builds.
The core issue on the ground was noise and quality of life, with neighbors and local leaders citing constant humming from 160 acres of current data centers as a warning sign.
This shows a clear local limit to “build everywhere” AI infrastructure strategies, even when framed as national security and backed by an executive order to fast‑track AI data centers.
Former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema and the Trump administration treated the site as strategic GPU and AI chip capacity, but Chandler treated it as a siting and community impact problem, not a policy showcase.
The new federal order to preempt state AI regulation underscores a widening gap between federal AI industrial policy and local land‑use politics, which can still stop specific GPU farms cold.
For operators and vendors, this is another signal that site selection, acoustic design, and community engagement are now as critical as power and water in AI data center planning.
The article is worth reading for how it captures this emerging friction between AI infrastructure scale‑out and the people living next to the racks.
Source: Chandler unanimously votes against proposed AI data center
