North Richland Hills is moving quickly to overhaul how it handles data centers after two proposed projects stirred up serious neighborhood backlash. City officials are racing to tighten the rules in the local zoning code, while residents are packing meetings and circulating petitions. The core fight is over whether heavy-duty server farms belong next to homes, and how much the city should clamp down on noise, water use and backup power.
The city has scheduled back-to-back public hearings before the Planning & Zoning Commission and the City Council, on July 20 and July 27 at 7 p.m. in the third-floor council chamber, where officials could sign off on text amendments to Chapter 118 (Zoning), according to the City of North Richland Hills. City notices say the revisions, first aired at a June 22 work session, are meant to spell out how both small and large data centers are regulated.
What’s being proposed
Staff and planning officials are weighing a package of zoning updates that would narrow where data centers can set up shop and what kind of approvals they must secure. Among the ideas on the table are requiring a specific-use permit for certain facilities, increasing the required distance from residential properties, limiting some types of cooling systems or water consumption, and forcing developers to pay for site testing, as reported by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. The city already treats facilities larger than 10,000 square feet differently from smaller ones, and that threshold is part of what triggered the current review.
Two projects at the center
One active proposal is a roughly 12,000-square-foot facility at 6401 Wuliger Way. State construction records list the “Wuliger Way Data Center” at that address, and the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation shows that filing as a 12,000-square-foot new-construction project…