On Wednesday night, the Marana Planning Commission unanimously voted to recommend rezoning to the Town Council, two parcels of agricultural land on Luckett Road for a datacenter.
Together the parcels make up a little more than 600 acres – about the size of Disneyland.
The proposals were submitted by Lazarus & Silvyn, the law firm that represents Beale Infrastructure, the developers of Tucson’s proposed Project Blue data center.
The North parcel is owned by the Church of Latter-day Saints.
According to the Pima County Assessor’s office, the South parcel (14990 W Hardin Rd), is owned by John Kai Jr.,Herbert Kai and Sidney Lex Felker or by the Kai Family Trust.
Officials with the Town of Marana confirm that one of the owners of that property is Herb Kai, a sitting councilmember for the Town of Marana.
Marana officials also told AZPM that Kai would recuse himself from the council meeting concerning the South parcel’s rezoning.
#The data center
During a presentation at Wednesday’s public hearing, Keri Silvyn, a lawyer representing Beale said the company selected Marana because it was not near a residential area, planned for development– and in compliance with an ordinance that the town passed last year, regulating data centers.
“Beale likes Southern Arizona,” she said. “And we are working with the town to specifically create the new access to the north up to i10 which is something that [I] think the town has had its eye on for quite some time and hasn’t really been able to figure out exactly how to do that and we are going to be working with the town and funding that project.”
She explained that two conceptual plans were submitted and that the request for each case was to apply a specific rezoning plan under the Marana data center ordinance.
Both parcels of land separately, would require between 550-750 megawatts of power at full build out and need approvals from the Arizona Corporation Commission.
Trico Electric Coop, an electric utility company in Marana would supply the North parcel and TEP would supply the South parcel.
During the public comment period, Brian Heithoff, ceo and general manager of Trico said the data center customer would pay for 100% of the upfront costs for all distribution and transmission infrastructure.
“If the cost to build or buy new resources to serve them exceeds our current embedded generation costs, the data center pays the difference, not our members,” he said, noting that Trico projects the data center to prolong the next rate case increase by three to four years because the data center would add generation costs.
AZPM asked Beale if Trico anticipates entering into a joint Energy Supply Agreement to power the data center.
Beale responded in a statement: "As this project continues to move forward, we will work with the necessary power providers, including Trico Electric Coop, to connect to the project sites.The power providers are responsible for obtaining Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) approval of energy supply agreements as required by law. At this time, we do not know when the power providers will seek ACC approval of the energy supply agreements for the Luckett North and Luckett South sites.”
The data center will use air cooling rather than industrial water for cooling, Silvyn said. Although Marana’s ordinance prohibits the town from supplying potable water, Beale is working with the Cortaro Marana Irrigation District to provide irrigation, industrial and fire suppression as well as Marana Water for office operations. The center would be located in the Marana Wastewater service area.
“The water usage today for the agriculture on this full 600 acres is over 2,000 acre-feet per year and so this air cooling technology, where water is not used for cooling, it results in a need for only 40 acre-feet per year,” Silvyn said. “That’s a reduction of over 95%.”
Concerned residents were not convinced. Raquel Mogollon with Worker Power, an advocacy group, asked if the water infrastructure plan would include limits on water use and speaker Angela Camos expressed concerns for pollution.
Vivek Bharathan asked, “Why are we supposed to give credit for them to build a server building and use less water than a farm?”
Emergency generators will also be on site, that must be designed at Tier 4 emissions standards under the Environmental Protection Agency, that could only be tested during normal work day hours.
Sue Ritz, the first speaker of the night, asked if backup power would consist of diesel or a liquefied natural gas (LNG) generator.
“Power generation is exempt from the Clean Air Act,” she said. “Will the generators require on site fuel usage if there is a spill, an accident or a catastrophic event?
The exterior design of the building (s) has not yet been completed and Beale will test decibel levels for noise once construction is complete, Silvyn said.
#Economic impact
Reps with Beale say that the capital investment from Phase 1 of the project would be about $5 billion, a town tax revenue of $145 million over the first 10 years, $950 thousand of impact fees generated, as well as promising more than 4,200 construction jobs and 400 permanent jobs.
The audience pushed back on some of these claims however, arguing that hyperscale data centers typically generate fewer than 50 long-term jobs.
Jackie McGuire, a Marana resident and cybersecurity expert expressed concerns for the parent company of Beale Infrastructure, Blue Owl Capital.
“The cost to construct and then put the components in those data centers will be approximately $120 billion, this is being funded primarily with private equity and debt that’s being hidden from public company balance sheets like Meta, Amazon, Google and Open AI,” she said, calling the project financially unsustainable.
McGuire also pointed to a recent statement made by Arvind Krishna, the CEO of IBM who warned that major tech companies may not realize returns on their billion-dollar investments.
Ian McDowell with Sundt Construction expressed support for construction workers and the good financial opportunity that the data center could bring.
Ted Maxwell, president and CEO of the Southern Arizona Leadership Council also spoke in support of the project.
“These are jobs that will keep families rooted that will bring new talent to our region, they also generate significant tax revenues without straining your local schools, your police department or your parks,” he said. “Marana is open for business.”
Jo Westerman, a former member of the Marana Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors said she was disappointed in adversarial behavior exhibited in other public hearings for similar projects and blamed the local media for amplifying falsehoods about data centers.
“Based on my understanding of Beale Infrastructure’s proposal, the company has engaged thoughtfully with our community and is committed to environmentally responsible and sustainable development that aligns with Marana’s long term vision,” she said.
During her presentation, Silvyn said that Beale notified all nearby property owners and held a virtual meeting on November 19, which 10 neighbors attended.
The one question Beale received at that meeting was about when the data center would open, which Silvyn said is anticipated to be in late 2028 to 2029.
#Looking ahead
The Planning Commission voted after a nearly two-hour public comment period that echoed the same concerns about Project Blue. However, many of the residents opposing the project said they were not against development or progress.
Derrick Espadas, the last speaker of the hearing, said he wasn’t against data centers, just this one.
“What we have here is a case of broken trust and an inability to trust Beale and their associates,” he said. “When there’s these guarantees, the guarantees are only as good as opposing counsel can change them.”
Before the unanimous vote to recommend the rezoning proposals to the Town Council, Commissioner David Bowen asked Silvyn to respond to audience claims that Beale had never built a data center before.
Silvyn responded that the company has a number of projects in various stages of development.
Commissioner Joseph Parsons asked about the potential of electricity prices going up and if power could be diverted from homes to the data center if there is an outage.
“Has that ever happened? Is there proof of that?” he asked.
Silvyn said she was unaware of that happening.
Commissioner Sharon Tyson said she applauded the town’s forward thinking in establishing regulations for data centers.
“We’ve got to be progressive if a town or city is not growing it’s stagnant and we don’t want to be stagnant,” Tyson said.
The seven-member commission of volunteers was met with boos and shouting from the crowd after pushing forward the first rezoning plan for the North parcel and a majority of them left before the rezoning plan was presented for the South parcel.
Marana’s Mayor and Council will consider rezoning two large parcels for a potential data center at an upcoming meeting in January 2026.
