A wave of opposition is building in Modesto over the possibility that a Kansas City-based developer could bring a massive data center to a 45-acre stretch of land along Highway 99 that once housed an FMC chemical plant. Residents packed into public discourse this month, worried about electricity rates, water use, and environmental fallout from a project that has not even been formally proposed yet.
Elizabeth Miranda-Morales, a Modesto resident, said she does not want her children to grow up in an area affected by a data center, according to KCRA. Fellow resident Kayla Delgadillo told the station she does not want a data center in Modesto and believes many of her neighbors feel the same way, adding that the projects do not seem sustainable to her. The target of that anxiety is a 45-acre industrial property at 1200 Graphics Drive, a site formerly occupied by an FMC chemical plant until 1984 and located just south of the Modesto Irrigation District’s Woodland Power Station, according to the Central Valley Journalism Collaborative.
A Developer’s Quiet Paper Trail
NorthPoint Development has not filed a formal data center application with the city, but the station’s report notes the company has kept a foothold on the Graphics Drive parcel for more than a year. In May 2025, the Modesto Planning Commission unanimously approved Resolution No. 2025-20, granting NorthPoint a two-year extension, through June 7, 2027, to file a final parcel map merging properties at that address, per city records reviewed by the Central Valley Journalism Collaborative. That extension preserved tentative parcel-map rights but did not grant any land-use approval for a data center, the collaborative’s reporting notes.
District 3 Modesto City Council Member Chris Ricci said he was approached by NorthPoint about data centers, and he has gone public with concerns about the company’s electrical usage, its effects on residents’ rates, its environmental impacts, and its water use, per the same KCRA account. The City of Modesto has confirmed that no formal applications for data centers have been submitted, and the city said it has received inquiries from companies about building a data center within city limits.
Why City Hall Says the Odds Are Long
Data centers are not permitted under Modesto’s current municipal code, the city has confirmed. Ricci said that makes data centers coming to Modesto highly unlikely under existing rules, though he stopped short of calling it impossible, telling KCRA it is not 100% off the table. Changing the municipal code would require multiple steps, including approval from the City Council, and Ricci said he believes trying to rewrite the code for data centers would be a poor decision; he added he does not intend to meet about the issue…