CHANDLER, Arizona — Officials in this Phoenix suburb on Thursday rejected a proposed artificial intelligence data center despite pressure from a former U.S. senator and a tech industry lobbying group — capping a fight over local control that has captured national attention.
The Chandler City Council voted unanimously against a request by a New York developer to rezone a plot of land to build a data center and business complex. The vote caps a local battle that escalated after the intervention of former U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) and raised new questions about tech industry efforts to influence local decisions around data center projects.
Explaining her no vote, Chandler Vice Mayor Christine Ellis said that she had long framed her decision about the local benefits rather than the national push to build AI. She recalled a meeting with Sinema where she asked point-blank “what’s in it for Chandler?”
“If you can’t show me what’s in it for Chandler, then we are not having a conversation,” Ellis said before voting against the project.
The local fight gained outsize attention after Sinema offered public comment at two local meetings in Chandler on behalf of the AI Infrastructure Coalition. The former senator said she was working “hand in glove with the Trump administration.”
The AI Infrastructure Coalition is backed by the lobbying firm Hogan Lovells and tech and energy giants including Andreessen Horowitz, Microsoft, Meta, Exxon Mobil, NextEra and Pinnacle West Capital, which owns Arizona’s largest utility. It’s aimed at advocating for all aspects of AI, including energy, manufacturing and financing.
“Chandler right now has the opportunity to determine how and when these new, innovative AI data centers will be built,” Sinema said at an October meeting of the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission. “When federal preemption comes, we’ll no longer have that privilege.”
Sinema did not attend Thursday’s vote. She did speak to Fox News on Thursday and said there is a “massive effort kind of on the left” to spread “massive misinformation” about data centers. She praised the Trump administration for “doing a great job of telling the truth” on data centers and said the water impacts are lower than in the past.
In 2022, Chandler established rules that limit where data centers can be built, a response to community concerns that the power-hungry facilities are too noisy and don’t create enough jobs. The city already hosts 10 data centers.
New York developer Active Infrastructure, however, requested that the city rezone a plot of land that currently hosts an abandoned office building in order to build a 422,000-square-foot data center campus. The site as planned would also include five new buildings for support staff and flexible use.
Active Infrastructure has not said what companies would use the computing power on the site, but CEO Jeffrey Zygler said the campus could attract advanced tech businesses that would establish offices on the campus to take advantage of their proximity to the computing power.
Although the city’s planning office advised against the rezoning, a zoning board approved the move in a meeting where Sinema offered comment. That left the matter up to the city council.
The project, along with Sinema’s involvement, attracted significant community opposition, with speakers raising concerns about whether the project would use too much water or raise power prices. Residents packed the council chambers, with many holding up signs reading “No More Data Centers.”
According to the city’s planning office, more than 200 comments were filed against the proposal compared to just eight in favor.
Zygler and Active Infrastructure officials in attendance said that their project would be designed to minimize noise impacts and that the project would use a cooling system that minimizes its water use.
Even as the Trump administration pushes the construction of data centers and new energy infrastructure to power them, local governments are increasingly pushing back. Several other Arizona cities, including Phoenix and Tucson, have written zoning rules for data centers or placed new requirements on the facilities. Local officials in cities in Oregon, Missouri, Virginia, Arizona and Indiana have also rejected planned data centers.
On Thursday, President Donald Trump also signed an executive order that would preempt state laws regulating AI models. However, that order is not intended to override regulations related to data centers and physical infrastructure. The order proposes the development of a legislative framework to codify preemption but states it would not affect state laws related to “AI compute and data center infrastructure, other than generally applicable permitting reforms.”
EPA this week also created a team to help data centers move through federal permitting.
The vote in Chandler, however, shows that a significant amount of AI infrastructure still runs through local governments.
“This is not just Chandler. We’re dealing with this all over,” Eric Runnestrand, a Chandler-area resident opposed to the project, said in an interview. “Having the community show up, it sends a message to the elected officials. They need to feel the people power behind them.”
