But it's just a lot of people.

I'm going to credit so I'm going to change.

Yeah, maybe two times we can't even challenge what it means.

I was giving you the office.

This is a wet church.

It's a beautiful code.

Oh yeah.

Oh, right.

It's just my road.

Well, I've got all the time.

Oh my god.

I played the one I go to the library.

I'm the same center.

They have less failure.

Yes, I know they I do time show.

And when you say you forgot they've no screen center.

Right.

That's okay.

And then you say my mother still practiced any offering previously.

Good evening.

Welcome to the planning and zone commission hearing.

Okay.

Can I have a roll call, please?

Chair Human?

Here.

Vice Chair Koschel.

Here.

Commissioner Quinn.

Here.

Commissioner Gola.

Here.

Commissioner Schwarzer?

Here.

Commissioner Billstein?

Here.

We have Quorum.

All right.

Next item is the Pledge of Allegiance.

I actually remember right in the time.

Articulate.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands.

One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you, Commissioner.

Okay.

So the audience before this meeting, we had discussions on the first six items.

Item number seven, which is the rezoning development plan for the price short innovation campus.

That is an action item.

So that was not part of the study session.

So is there anybody in the audience that'd like to hear any of the items one through six that are on the agenda?

Okay.

Seeing none, what is the commission's pleasure?

Chair.

Move to approve the consent agenda for today's meeting.

October 15th.

Okay.

Do you have a second?

Second.

Okay.

Commissioner second.

Any further discussion?

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Any abstentions?

Okay.

Motion carries unanimously.

Thank you.

Okay.

Staff who's up.

Item number seven.

Good evening, Mr.

Chairman, members of the commission.

Item seven is PLH 2446 Price Road Innovation Campus.

The subject site is a 40-acre site that's located at 3380 South Price Road.

It's located at the southwest corner of Price and Dobson Roads.

The request is to rezone the property to Planned Area Development, PAD for a data center in addition to knowledge intensive uses, and I'll explain what that is in a few minutes.

Advanced business services and ancillary commercial.

The request also includes a mid-rise overlay for up to 90 feet over the entire site, as well as preliminary development plan approval for a site layout and building architecture.

When the site was rezoned from agriculture to planned area development to allow space data corporation, a high technology firm, which merged with orbital sciences around that same time to build an approximately 330,000 square foot facility.

And that what they did in that facility is they basically specialized in military and civilian aerospace engineering, manufacturing, and testing.

Construction of the facility was completed in 1990, and the uh aerial photo that you see before you is from 93.

And in 2019, the property was vacated after being uh acquired by Northrop Grumman in 2018.

The existing uh 369,000 square foot building on the property has remained unoccupied since then.

The property is located in the South Price Road corridor, a corridor that has been planned as a major employment area since 1982.

The corridor is anchored by Intel on the South End, which has been there since 1995 and has expanded several times over the years.

Other notable employers on the corridor include Wells Fargo, Northrop Grumman, as I mentioned, um Iridium, and several financial services companies.

In December of 22, the city adopted a data center ordinance, which is now section 352214 of the zoning code.

And the ordinance states that data centers as a primary use are not allowed by right unless they're explicit explicitly approved as part of the PAD as part of the planned area development zoning designation.

It goes on to say that ancillary data centers, data centers that are ancillary, are permitted in any zoning district where industrial or employment uses are permitted as long as they occupy no more than 10% of the building footprint.

They are used to serve the enterprise functions of the on-site business and not data storage or processing services to third parties, and they're not housed in a standalone structure.

This brings us to the proposed development, which is proposed to be constructed in three phases.

Phase one includes a data center that is 422,877 square feet, as shown in building A on the plan.

The data center is proposed as a standalone primary use, not as an ancillary use, which is what is triggering this PAD rezoning request.

The substation is planned to the south of the data center, and building B is on the north side of building A, the data center is a RD research and development flex, an office speculative building, because there's no tenant identified at this point, so it is a speculative building.

On the west side of the property is the uh Octoo water reclamation plant owned by the city and operated by the city.

And you'll probably hear from the applicant tonight that if you're standing on the west side of the property, there's there's quite a stench, and and staff actually agrees that it's not a very good uh smell on the west side.

But staff believes that there's um other opportunities to to block that stench.

It doesn't have to be a data center, it could be other buildings manufacturing or equipment from a manufacturing facility, for example.

Phase two includes two RD Flex office buildings, both are uh shown as being the same size at this point, 42,674 square feet, and then phase three includes two more RD Flex office buildings.

Um building C is 66,476 square feet, and building D, 71,420.

To be clear that the data center is the only tenant identified by the applicant at this time.

So all of the RD Flex office buildings are speculative.

To address the timing of the proposed developments, the applicant is proposing that both buildings A and B be constructed at the same time.

As part of phase two, the applicant has indicated that the balance of the site will be marketed to try to attract a single user for the remaining 19 acres.

However, at a minimum, the applicant has made a commitment through a separate DA development agreement, which will be presented to council for review concurrently with the zoning.

They've made a commitment through that DA to obtain building permits for building E and F within 12 months of receiving certificate of occupancy for the data center.

In addition, phase three, they've made a commitment to build at least one of those buildings, either C or D, or not to build it, but to obtain a building permit for one of those buildings within 36 months of the certificate of occupancy for the data center.

The proposed architecture for the data center building consists of tilt-up concrete with glazing masonry and metal accents.

The generous use of glazing gives the building an office type of look and the masonry and metal accents give the building a finished and high-tech look, which staff is pleased with.

Again, a midrise overlay is requested over the entire building, or sorry, the over the entire site to go up to 90 feet.

This is a rendering of building B, which would be located directly north of the data center.

Again, the building uses tilt-up concrete, glazing, masonry, and metal accents material to create a high-tech office type of look.

And the height on this building is uh between 45 ranges from 45 to 47 feet in height.

Building E looking located along Dobson Road uses the same materials again to create that high-tech look, and it's at 45 feet to the top of parapet.

As we consider this proposal, and as we consider how it may or may not fit into the South Price Road Corridor, staff looks to the general plan for guidance.

The subject site is located in growth area number four in the general plan, which is the South Price Road Corridor.

The growth area policies for this corridor could be summarized as having two main things.

The first theme, reserve the corridor for knowledge-based industries, and the second theme is preserve and expand campus like environment.

Policy A in this growth area corridor states actively preserve and enhance the high value employment reputation of the corridor by giving priority to single users in campus like settings.

So there's three elements to this policy that I'd like to point out.

The first is to enhance the high value employment.

Second, give priority to single users, and third, campus like settings.

So with respect to the first, the high value employment, staff finds that data centers provide significantly lower numbers of jobs after construction is complete compared to the high value employment industries that are targeted for the corridor.

With respect to given priority to single users, if this is approved by council, future phases would be incentivized by a development agreement, as I mentioned before, to be built as speculative buildings that attract multiple smaller tenants, which would greatly reduce the ability to prioritize a larger single user.

And third, with respect to the campus like setting, future phases in staff staff's opinion are not designed in the campus like setting, and I'll explain that a little bit more in a few minutes.

Policy B states reserve the corridor for knowledge-based industries and supporting non-residential uses.

So again, there's two elements to this policy.

First is reserve it for knowledge-based industries, and then supporting residential and non-residential supporting non-residential uses.

When we look at knowledge-based industries, the general plan defines that term as high technology, biomedical, aerospace, renewable energy research and development, and other similar research and development based industries.

So it's pointing back to other similar research and development based industries.

So that begs the question what is a data center, and does it fit into this definition?

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, the data center is a place where a number of computers that contain large amounts of information can be kept safely, according to IBM.com.

A data center is a physical room building or facility that houses IT infrastructure for building, running, and delivering applications and services.

It also stores and manages the data associated with those applications and services.

Cisco.com states at its simplest, a data center is a physical facility that organizations use to house their critical applications and data.

Based on these definitions of a data center, staff finds that a data center is more akin to a storage facility for active computer servers and related IT equipment and is not a knowledge-based industry.

The next question is Is a data center supporting non-residential use?

Examples of supporting non-residential uses include commercial uses such as coffee shops, restaurants, business services such as co-working space, printing and courier services, and ancillary uses that are provided and utilized by the same employer, which could be a data center, but as an ancillary use, not as a primary use.

So staff finds that a data center is not as a primary use is not considered to be a supporting non-residential use.

The next policy, policy C states maintain and expand the campus environment on South Price Road.

Staff struggles to find a campus-like environment with a proposed layout, which places all of the buildings parallel with Dobson Road and lacks qualities of campus design.

Elements that make a campus-like environment include a boulevard-like driveway that connects all the buildings and unifies all the buildings, enhanced pedestrian connections to and from the buildings and to shared common spaces, as well as the shared amenities, the common open spaces and focal points that unify the whole campus together.

Staff believes that there's a good opportunity here with this site to build a special campus by taking advantage of that water feature that's existing on the northeast corner of the site.

Buildings could be oriented around it, so that they're fronting onto it and not basically ignoring it.

And a pedestrian enhanced pedestrian walkway could you know lead to that and you know from that water feature south to all the buildings around the campus.

There's also an opportunity to create a boulevard like driveway that connects from price road and curves and goes to Dobson Road.

And so there's there's an opportunity here to create something uh really special with the campus design.

The last two policies I like to point out from the general plan are policy D encourage more diverse diversified knowledge-based industries, and policy G preserve the campus like environment by ensuring developments and non-residential supporting uses are centered on a common design theme.

These two policies may seem to be redundant or repetitive, but they drive home the point that these two are the major, these are the two major themes of the the policies in the in the general plan for South Price Road, and staff finds it again not a knowledge the data center is not a knowledge-based industry, and the proposed design is not a campus-like design.

In addition to staff finding and consistency with the policies of the general plan.

Staff is also concerned that approving a data center as a primary use in this corridor would establish a precedent for the remaining undeveloped properties in this corridor.

There are 10 existing data centers in South Price Road, all of which were approved prior to the 2016 general plan uh policies that I just went over.

A data center uh located at the southeast corner of Germain and uh price.

Um that was the first one in, and that data center served only one user.

That was actually a charge Charles Schwab, Charles Schwab.

Uh they were the owner, they were the developer, and they were the only user of that data center.

So there was single user data center.

Eight of the existing data centers on Price Road are in the continuum development, which is just half a mile north of the site on the east side of Price Road.

The PAD zoning for continuum does identify data centers as a permitted use, which is how they got to be there.

At the time that the zoning was approved in 2010, no one really knew what data centers would become, uh, that they would become these large warehouses that would uh basically serve uh computer space for third parties and require enormous amount of power and um other resources.

The general plan policies that I just covered were adopted in part to more narrowly target the types of uses that the city wants on in Price Road and also to discourage the development of more data centers.

For this reason, staff is concerned that approval of the data center as a primary use in this application could set a precedence for the development of additional data centers in the corridor.

With respect to neighborhood outreach, the applicant hosted three different neighborhood meetings.

Only two are required by code.

So they did have an additional uh one additional meeting in addition to what was required by code.

At each of the meetings, attendees inquired about a variety of different topics, including uh the data center operations, substation design, potential uses in the future buildings, uh potential for the use of the existing building, uh building heights, noise, and the applicant uh responded to all of the um all of the questions and addressed all of their concerns as as noted in the uh neighborhood meeting summaries that are attached to the uh the staff memo.

Staff has received three emails and support and seven emails in opposition, and there is an addendum memo in front of the planning zoning commissioners where four additional emails were received after the staff memo was it was uh published.

Um I believe that those four emails represent two residential units, and so I believe two there's there's two couples and in those uh emails.

So it's really uh five units um representing opposition, and then staff receive two general inquiries.

For the reasons stated, staff recommends denial.

Staff recommends that the planning zoning commission recommend denial due to the inconsistency with the South Price Road corridors, uh the policies in the corridor, excuse me.

However, if the planning and zoning commission were inclined to approve or entertain a motion to approve the proposal, staff has provided an alternative motion with stipulations for the zoning and for the PDP for the commission's consideration.

With that, uh that concludes my presentation, and I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Questions of staff.

Right.

Yes, through chair.

Um, any chance that we can hear about those stipulations at this time?

Um, I would need to grab my memo.

David, before we get to their commissioner, let's go through the process.

And we can always go there on it.

That would be a whole different subject.

Yep.

So any other questions for staff?

David, we're gonna hold off on that until if we if we need them.

So any other questions?

Commissioner.

When we're discussing campus like setting, I saw the I saw the renderings.

I'm just trying to, I'm thinking of others along Price Road.

And perhaps they were constructed before we came up with the campus like settings, but I I don't I can't bring many to mind that have that campus like setting.

So I'm just wondering exactly where that's coming from and what we're looking for.

Because when we talk about just in my mind as the layman, so we talk about the it's smelling, and then we want to have a campus, you know, for people to be at, how are we envisioning that?

Great question.

Uh through the chair, uh Commissioner Gala.

Um, since the beginning of uh Price Road, you know, when um you know, I think it was Motorola uh began on the east side of Price, where continuum is today, and then uh Intel came later on the south end.

Um each of those were developed in like campus like settings where their their uh setbacks from the street were really large.

They were like I think around 100 feet, um more than what the zoning code requires, and it's to establish it was to establish like this uh campus like look when you drive down Price Road, you saw the grass on both sides of the street, and then you saw you know the main boulevard um going into the site and the big building off off in the distance.

So that since the uh the beginning of the policies for for Price Road, that's been uh there's always been in the general plan to create like and maintain and improve on these campus like settings.

As far as the uh the stench, um, you know, there are ways to work with that and putting a tall building on the west side, I think helps.

Um, but um my only point or staff's uh point was it doesn't have to be a data center, it could be a different building.

To that point, you could look at Wells Fargo, you could look at Northrop Grumman.

Campus is a funny word.

I mean, you think of like a high school campus or college campus, campus means a lot of different things, but it's it's the idea of pulling things together.

Wells Fargo is a perfect example, it pulls together um the whole unit kind of situation, the Northrop building up further with the three stories and stuff was designed with a driveway and things like that.

It gives you a feel of one, you know, um uh comprehensive unit, I guess is the best way to say it.

The setback definition helps.

I when I look at Intel, I don't think of a campus, and my husband works there, so I love Intel, but I'm not bashing on them at all.

Uh but it it's it's definitely more sterile, but the setback makes that helps me a lot.

And if you if you look at Intel's main part before they did all the expansions, that really was a campus like the driveways going in and things like that.

It's just and the intent over the years was the continuation of adding buildings, and now we've added big fabs and things like that, but still it's the entrance way.

It gives you that feeling of it's one corporation kind of a situation.

So yeah.

Okay.

Any other questions?

Commissioner, you're going for the bottom first, go ahead.

Uh Commissioner Bills did.

All right, thank you.

Yeah, that was a handful of questions.

I think I'll reserve most of them until after we see the presentation.

But I think the campus thing was something that was interesting to me as well because last night I you know driving the site, I was out there, and you're right, it's weird to have this idea of we want inviting and we want people to campus, you think of sitting on a uh a grassy lawn or picnic tables, and then there's a whole portion of it that there's a stench, and you're like, I'm not gonna put a picnic table over there.

Um, but I do think with with the lake and with the water features, I mean it's beautiful, and there's some some really nice stuff there.

But I also then I drove south through Intel, and there was like nothing about it that was inviting me as an outsider in.

Clearly, it's this idea if you're working there and there's grand sense of um of arrival.

And I do think that if we could, as we're doing such a good job as a city of trying to dive into what do these terms mean more, and staff is doing an amazing job with that.

That what does that campus thing look like?

And I'd be curious, you know, if there has been any thought put into rearranging the site or a different uh plan, because I like what you're saying about having this feeling of of buildings looking at each other or grand boulevard.

Um, but and to your point of there could be another large building that blocks the smell, you know, but but there isn't, you know, this is the one that's being presented to us today, and so I think looking at that, um, I would be curious if there's anything else that could be done with that that site, but um it the campus feeling it's a weird word because it's not in Intel.

I'm just gonna keep driving past it if I'm not intentionally going there to work.

Um, so just I think to continue just on the theme that we're on here about the campus feel.

I mean, I I see a lot of feedback here and appreciate the the pol the proposals of the general plan or the um vision that's outset by the general plan.

Um I'm just trying to understand how a more of a campus environment in this particular location drives home what it feels to me that what we're really proposing is to have more employment and how does this focus on the the campus and the layout aside from design standard, which I'm very pro-design standards.

I've lived in Chandler a long time.

I have told you guys I appreciate everything that you're doing with especially our industrial buildings.

Um, but I'm I'm just seeing a lot of focus here on this layout, and I'm trying to marry that with the conversation about we want more jobs and try and understand how how do I focus on this and how does that deliver more jobs and more employment because of how it's laid out and having a campus feel.

So I think that's just what I'm trying to get my arms around here.

Thank you through the chair, vice chair.

Um one of the stipulations that's proposed in the PvP section of the stipulations is to work with staff for the applicant to work with staff to um to redesign that layout of phases two and three.

So we would if if approved, if council decides to approve this, we would sit down with the applicants and um and and talk about you know the proposals, um, different options for creating that campus like setting.

Um, you know, going higher is is probably the way to get more jobs.

Um there is a 90, they're asking for a 90 foot uh mid-rise overlay.

So um I think we there's a way to get that campus like um setting as well as to get uh uh as many jobs as we can.

Thanks, David.

And I see that you've limited the data center if it were to be moved for approval, it would only be limited to that specific space where it's outlined in that footprint.

Is there a way to quantify what a typical um employment might be within a footprint of a building, or is that too hard to estimate?

I would say typical employment within that footprint.

We know that it's a very tall building and the square footage of it is extensive, but it's not akin to you know, X number of square feet per employee just because of the type of how it's laid out, but from a footprint standpoint of that building, is there a way to approximate what you would have envisioned there to be number of employment generated by this site, ideally?

That's a great question.

Um, I do have this backup slide uh which shows a square feet per job.

Um I it's the source is chat GBT and and and speaking with uh our economic development director, it grabs from different sources.

Um so I can't speak to exactly where it's grabbing from, but um, but it's clear though, um, as you know, I've highlighted the data center and AI data center on the left-hand side, and then the square feet per job on the uh you know in the middle of the screen there, and you can see uh how much more square feet uh per job, uh the data center and the AI data center uh require or or utilize compared to those other industries, such as uh you know, corporate office, research and development, advanced manufacturing, um, it's it's quite a lower number.

Um, and you can look at the jobs per 1,000 square feet as well.

You know, that ratio there is substantially lower than the types of uses that we're targeting for uh price road.

In fact, just north of data center, there's warehouse and distribution.

That's probably the closest uh job ratio that we're looking at uh when we compare industries, and and that's basically reaffirms staff's finding that the data center is more like warehouse for for computer servers, Commissioner Wilson.

Uh thank you.

I guess my question for staff, and and I appreciate how how tough it is sometimes you guys have to dig through all this stuff and say, does this does this come this work and is this compatible?

And one of the things that uh that you had mentioned that that I hear a lot with my job where you had said like the data center is kind of akin to storage facilities.

And one thing I hear from people all the time is when are they gonna stop building storage facilities?

And my comment is always, well, when people stop using them, when they stop filling up, they will stop.

And the kind of irony here a little bit is the fact that you know we're pulling this data from chat GPT that's using data centers, like this.

So when I tell my kids and when I look at stuff, people stop filling up storage units, people will stop building them.

Same thing.

I think if we stop using some of this technology, where I actually do believe the data centers support a lot of high-tech work.

And so where um where it might not be the person who is actually sitting at a desk solving the equation in a way that we're used to, I I would say that this this does support high-tech industries, and where there might not be that person sitting there at that desk the way it was 40 years ago.

Um I think it can still support the industry.

I'll make a comment, I think, to the vice chair's point about this footprint.

Yes, it can support other things around there, but for this footprint, the job creation, just like continuum to the north of here is nil to speak of.

I mean, it's it's a minor kind of thing that um inhibits the the job performances that we need for our city.

Land is is you know, we have X amount of land left and stuff.

So anyway.

Any other comments?

Otherwise, I'll go to the applicant.

Okay.

David, thank you.

That last slide was great.

Yeah, okay.

Mr.

Bao, are you running the show or yeah, yeah.

You have your trusty assistant there that helped you.

Uh-oh.

Commission, thank you for your time today, Adam Baugh, 2525.

VCR Zona Built More Circle.

I do appreciate the time you've been here.

Um calling this a data center is like calling my uh comparing a walkman and an iPhone and saying they're both musical devices.

Um, they both play music.

But there's a clear difference between what a data center is and what we're proposing.

And I appreciate what staff's presentation is, but I think there's a little bit more to the story than what um has been shared so far.

I'll skip through a couple of things, but this part it matters to me right here.

When you consider the variety of parcels and opportunities that are up and down this corridor, I think staff has done an excellent job establishing what is the vision and intent of Price Road.

When they put that policy together early, early 2000s, what they have seen today is a clear reflection of a job well done.

The one challenge about that, and what they can't control, or guess that maybe they could have controlled it, are the uses that surround us as opposed to any of the other parcels up and down that corridor.

And we're the ones having to adapt our plan to the circumstances that we can't control to the west and to the south.

Ironically, those are both um city-owned facilities.

And when you think through a fear that perhaps this sets a precedence for something else down the corridor, I think it's really easy to squash the idea because there's nothing else along that corridor that is similar similarly situated in a position just like this.

The reality of what's happening directly west of us is such a significant impact that it drives any potential occupying use away from that western edge.

The good thing is there's um a difference in the type of employment that incurs inside of a data center as opposed to the rest of property, who are less likely to complain to the odor of what's happening as opposed to the type of campus that staff would like to see in this corridor.

I won't spend much time on this slide, but I do think it's interesting that when North Old Grumman acquires this property in 2018, a year later they move out, which tells me that this building had already become functionally obsolete, and it had no utility for one of the most important defense contractors in our nation.

That's one of the reasons why this building has sat vacant since 2019.

Despite being consistently marketed by JLL, and I believe and hope that the city has put this on the radar of other prospective users that have wanted to come to the city.

At the end of the day, the building in its current form isn't re-occupiable.

Um, there has been some money spent to try to entice people to come here.

In fact, the in fact, even creating a room to show them what it could look like if they invested dollars into it.

Some things that are challenging and the feedback from the brokerage community and the people that have toured the property is that not only is it functionally obsolete, there's it's not even salvageable, and particularly the second floor, which is mostly employment uh built and designed.

Well, today's modern user is looking to do a different type of function on the second floor, which has a greater degree of low capacity than what the building is designed for today.

So nobody at the city, nor do my client or anybody else previously had any expectation that this building as it exists today could ever be retenanted for any meaningful use.

I've already covered some of the site challenges, but what's interesting, not just the adjacent uses, but it's the regional competition.

In 2001, when Price Road Corridor kind of policy was created, this really was the only game in town in the Southeast Valley.

A lot's changed since then, particularly the robust development of the industries around the Mesa Gateway Airport and the ability of other West Valley cities to also create key employment technology corridors.

And while we, I think enjoyed a great run being sort of the primary feature in the East Valley, we have a significant increase in the competition that we're trying to attract.

And so for that reason, I think that's why you see so many different warm notices that are that have been given to the city since August of 2023 between Intel and GM Financial to Northrop to Intel to Intel to Intel.

There's about 2600 jobs that have been announced as layoffs in the last two years alone in this very corridor.

There's a million plus square feet of empty space in this corridor.

So I have to balance this role of a site that is, I don't know the most optimal location given what's happening on this, and a core that's asking for campus style uses in an area where these campus style uses are shedding jobs.

So what do we do in this situation?

Um I just ended up having to try to find when these announcements came, and so it's just fun to kind of click through the variety of newspaper headlines that have sort of discussed the challenges that have occurred with employers in this area.

Now, our proposal is not just an AI data center.

Well, first of all, it's not a data center.

I feel like that got missed in the entirety of the presentation.

This is an AI data center, which is like calling your rotary line phone and iPhone are two different things, even though you can talk to somebody on it.

That'd be like comparing a data center to an AI data center.

And we're not just doing an AI data center.

We're doing a tech park with six other buildings that accompany and come with this proposal.

And the uses that come with this proposal, beyond just the computing functions that are hyper and within the data center, are the types of things that are knowledge-based industries that are specifically encouraged by the general plan and by the city, including tech and research, advanced computing, aerospace, engineering, and even potential biomedical.

If I was only bringing you a data center, I think we would be having a different conversation.

And I don't know if I would even be here today.

But there's so much more than the nine acres of my data center.

This is a 40-acre parcel with a whole bunch of other opportunities and uses that come along with it.

You may ask, rather than looking at a dictionary online or even IBM or Cisco, which is funny because if you went to the IBM website, I could also see a different definition for AI data center, but that was not what was chosen.

This is the definition that the city provided me when they gave me their drafted development agreement.

So I just want to point to their definition.

In red at the very end, it says an AI data center is distinct from a traditional enterprise data center or co-location facility whose primary function is general IT hosting, transaction processing, or long-term data storage.

And I would say, to make it simple, that red part says what we are doing is different than all the other 10 that are up this corridor.

I don't expect you to read the black letter, so I'll just point out the quick quotations from the city's definition.

The AI data centers operated primarily for artificial intelligence and advanced computing workloads.

It's the deployment of high-density processing units and other advanced processors optimized for AI model training and high performance computing applications.

It's specialized cooling and power systems engineers to support high density compute loads.

Network infrastructure configured to provide low latency, high bandwidth internet connections, interconnections between computing nodes.

So I didn't make this definition up.

This actually came from the city as they gave it to me as part of the terms of a development agreement.

This is precisely what we're doing, nothing like the other 10 that existed under a prior regime and a prior technological standard and with a totally different need and use.

If I could draw the distinction between the two, and I won't spend a lot of time on this because I know this is more of a land use question, but I feel like it's an important distinction between what we're doing.

And as you can see, the areas in blue at the top are the different ways I can compare and contrast a AI data center versus a traditional data center, particularly in the workflow, as you see here, and their design and the way they they cluster their servers and their equipment is very different than the version that was up and down of that corridor.

As you look at the hardware and the components that come with it, extremely different, it's extremely modernized, not relying upon old processors and components that many of you have inside your own computers and equipment at home today.

The power and cooling is vastly different.

The technology that runs these facilities and the power that's needed is so much more enhanced because the operations that occur inside require a greater degree of power delivery and rapid cooling that doesn't use the old technology that you see in any of the other 10, but technology that is recently invented and will still be invented going forward.

The networking architecture is not tier, but it's rather clustered and it's distributed in this manner.

The software stack and the functions that they perform is vastly different, and the uses.

Now, if I was doing anything in red on those prior slides, and I think I would probably agree with staff on that one.

What's different is the distinction.

As I look at this question, you I asked myself, what is so significant about an AI data center?

First of all, it is the backbone of our technology today and going forward, not in what we have seen in the past or up to this moment.

It's the same reason why our military uses it.

It's the same reason why this administration has made a great priority as part of their agenda going forward and as part of America's action plan to make sure that they are winning the AI race and not losing.

This is a matter for them of foreign affairs and competitive in a global matter.

As a matter of national priority, it not only protects our national security, but there's a significant things that are occurring within this administration's action plan that promotes and highlights the very reasons why we don't need another data center where I can store the 15,000 photos that I still haven't downloaded for my phone.

We need something that can complete quickly, hyper fast computing for uses and industries that in many cases haven't even yet been discovered.

Why is it matter for this site?

The nine-acre data center here unlocks the remaining 31 acres of this property.

The difference is because of the ability to lease server space from this is so important and it's such a premium, it helps subsidize the balance of the site.

Now, if I was going to build these buildings today, the tech park buildings, and tried to compete with the buildings that are already built and in this corridor today, I couldn't.

The cost to build are so expensive and higher, and the interest rates are higher.

And because it's known that data centers are able to attract more financially, it helps us uh develop the other balance despite its high costs at a lower basis and a lower basis helps it be competitive with inventory that was built 20 years ago in that corridor.

What this does, and these types of buildings are also designed for modern uses, not for the architecture and layout that was built over the last 25 years.

So buildings that have taller clear height on the inside with higher optimal layouts and designs and efficiencies.

And as a result, we aren't competing with the other inventory in the area or the other one million plus square feet that's empty in that area.

We can compete because we're bringing a new building type to the market.

And there is a following that happens that when you create an AI data center, there's a series of industries that choose to locate nearby because of latency and the ability to have that hypercomputing in a quick proximity.

The AI data center does create jobs, and maybe not to the degree that chairman or staff thinks it does.

But to ignore the other five buildings and focus only on the one wouldn't be fair to the applicant either.

The jobs that come with this are parsing the data center, but mostly in the other buildings.

And what happens here is by putting a data center on the west side, I'm effectively solving the very concern that staff noted, the odor and the visual of seeing that stuff on your side.

Do you think I'm going to be able to put a multi-office tower on the west side next to all that?

Nobody would do that.

But by putting the data center on the west side and only on the west side through a DD restriction and a legal description, I've essentially buffer my rest of the property from the impacts that I can't control west of me.

Those impacts aren't just invented.

When I was having dinner in the downtown Akateo area, it was mentioned to me that at different times that they have to seal the manhole covers there because the odor comes up to there.

And so by putting this here, I actually create the new jobs on the other side, and I solve the unique issues that are happening here that aren't happening up and down the rest of this corridor.

Now, what I love about this opportunity is there are two different development scenarios.

In either scenario, I build the data center in the building north of it.

But after I build that, and during the time that I get zoning approval and the permitting and to the construction, the city, the economic development director, has a long window to attract and market the rest of the site for a single user.

This plan, while we did our best to create a speculative plan, I can't create a speculative single campus user because I don't, those are purpose-built.

But it doesn't mean that Micah and the rest could market and attract the balance of the site.

And this plan, which is showing four buildings on the front side, could easily be modified for if he was to land NVIDIA, for example.

So the development scenario number one gives them the leeway and the time to attract that single user if it wants to come to this market, and perhaps it would because now they have this component that we've built on the west side.

But I also can appreciate that we shouldn't leave vacant land indefinitely.

So that's why we have the second development scenario that if after sufficient time of marketing and effort by the economic development department to attract the single user, if they can't deliver it within a time, we will then build the speculative buildings.

And the reason why we do that, we don't want to add more empty inventory on a quarter, there's already a million plus square feet.

But we also think that we owe it to the city to ensure that something happens and not just empty dirt forever.

So both scenarios can work at the same time, giving them an opportunity to track the single user and also holding our feet to fire to build our buildings.

The first phase would be in blue, the middle the second phase would be the areas in green.

So this is what it would look like if we were to just go to phase one and we would scrape the rest of the site.

And then at some point, we would build the phase two along DOPS Road and then the middle point and phase three.

I want to point out something here.

We have overparked the site.

There's no reason to overpark a property unless you believe it's going to be heavy employment uses.

And when you understand that we have 520 surplus parking spaces, it means any of these buildings have room for a second floor.

And we will build these buildings speculatively with a low capacity to accommodate a second floor edition when it's net needed.

So while my buildings, all my um tech bark buildings are, I think this is helpful.

The building today, about 360,000 square feet, just the present building right now.

My proposed tech bark buildings, if I just count the bottom floor only, 274,000.

But if I add in the mezzanine, because I have the parking on site to add in the mezzanine, I can get up to 534,000 square feet of employment, which is much greater than what's on the property today.

And that's not including the data center.

I'm not counting the data center in that number that would have its own jobs that come with it.

The reality is I don't build a mass load of extra parking at the cost it says to do that, without the expectation that it's going to be absorbed and needed through the generation of this project.

So if you worry about jobs, this is your answer.

Beyond the other things that will come along with this site, include amenity areas, enhancing the lake, enhancing the streetscape and putting pedestrian features back and forth.

But I know that's probably not the key driving thing going forward.

Here's an example of our building today.

If you want to talk about the type of high quality architecture that you would expect in the price road corridor, I think this raises the bar of what I've seen in the area.

And this is the building directly north of the data center.

So if I'm driving southbound on Price Road, this is the first building I see, and this is the building behind it.

So even our building that's most hidden is one of our most attractive buildings.

So after I pass this building on Price Road, heading southbound, eventually I'll come to see these buildings here, which blend into Dobson Road.

Again, really high quality architecture, the type that you would expect in this area.

So I want to talk a little bit about the data center ordinance.

The city did not ban data centers, and I want to make that clear because there seems to be this perception that they aren't allowed.

They didn't ban them.

They said if they're coming, they need to A, be in a PAD zoning, and B comply with enhanced standards from lessons learned by prior operators that they didn't have this provision in place back then.

What are those standards?

First of all, a greater degree of notification than on any other type of use.

Number two, additional neighbor meetings.

In our case, we didn't just do two, we did three.

Another requirement in that data center orange is to do additional noise mitigation, both before the neighbor meeting and to design it appropriately, and then to have a third party come in and evaluate it as well.

There's been a lot of lessons learned over the time, but there's been a lot of failures that have been observed by the operations that occurred.

And I think staff was wise to put these type of provisions in place because they protect the integrity and address the concerns that you've heard in prior times with different operators.

And lastly, there's some additional operational considerations that must be implemented once the building's built.

And I put a check mark next to it just because I believe we'll accomplish these things in the future when it's built.

But these are the things that are outlined in the zoning code.

And so you have to ask yourself if this is an applicant that's bringing forth a proposal, and if the proposal is able to meet all the standards of the of the zoning ordinance, is there a reason why we shouldn't allow them to go forward?

This was our mailing list, and I think staff has did an excellent job outlining what we did, the number of meetings, the number of letters we sent.

I do want to point out that what thing was missing there is that a letter of support was provided by the ACTIO Design Review Community Association, which really helped spent a lot of time working with them.

In fact, one of the first comments we heard from staff when I filed this case was to delete the lake at the corner of the property or significantly reduce it for the purpose of maybe saving some water.

But understand that that was a key consideration for the Acuteo Community Association, and we felt after making the request significant push back.

We had to change our plan to respect and keep the lake, although they did give us an ability to shrink it by about 9,000 square feet.

So as I thought through this reason, this case, what are the reasons to deny it?

First one, obvious is well, these make a lot of noise, and we can't have that occur in this area.

I think your zoning ordinance has solved that itself.

And this provision wasn't in place in any of the other ones up another quarter.

But the other thing to understand about the noise is our ability to cool this facility is in a very different modernized technology that doesn't exist in the way those other ones are designed, and they can't be modified because they are designed for a specific manner and way.

In this case, we do air chilled and direct to chip liquid cooling, and then a closed loop as well.

So you put water in this loop one time and you don't have to re-circate, you just circulate it around, kind of like a radiator in your car.

And those newer versions significantly address the noise concerns.

Someone would say, well, but these consume so much water, we cannot let that happen.

Well, interestingly, this new way of cooling doesn't consume the type of water that the others do.

And more importantly, the city through a development agreement has asked us, which we've agreed to, to restrict us to only one-inch water meter to serve our entire facility, which is the same thing as what you have in your own office or a commercial building, for example.

Um, I also worth noting, this building built in the late 80s, early 90s, has four large water chillers that in, even though it's empty, are still running because of insurance requirements and have been burning more than a million gallons a month annually, even as the building is sits vacant today.

So the moment I shut them down, I instantly return to the city about 12 million gallons of water savings each year going forward.

What about traffic?

Does this use create so much traffic that this area just simply can't hold it?

Our traffic is actually consistent with the traffic that was previously occurring when the building was occupied.

And if someone's saying you you're not going to have any jobs, so we should say no, then you should also shouldn't say we have a traffic problem because if you don't have jobs, you don't have traffic.

But we know we'll have jobs, and we know our jobs will be consistent with what's been happening here in the past.

Environmental concerns.

I've I it's a new one I only heard more recently.

I would just say that the nature of this price roll corridor has a lot of uses that occur up and down there, including the fact that this used to be a rocket testing facility or Intel next door or Motorola or all the other knowledge-based uses that occur up and down this corridor.

I don't know if we're any different than what you've seen already present or historically in this area.

A big thing I've heard, and I can respect the concern here is a power.

Initially, there was a fear that this project would consume the power that was present in the area and prohibit other potential employment uses down the road from coming here because there wouldn't be power to serve them.

If that is a belief, I can understand why the opposition.

But it's unfortunately a miscorrect understanding.

Um, and largely because SRP has changed the way we will be receiving power for this project.

They moved all power applicants into something called a cluster study, which basically says, all you users out there and all you guys want a bunch of power, we're lumping into cluster study, and we're going to determine how much does it cost to create the power that this that you collectively want.

And then once we determine how much that is, then we're going to tell you this is what your parata share is.

Well, in our case, we just got a number last week.

It was 242 million dollars to that we pay, nobody else does, to create the power to serve this project.

Now, as you catch your breath, I want you to appreciate another factor that they require us to pay 30% of that money, which would be 72 million dollars in January.

So I'm not consuming power necessarily in this area, as much as I am creating and providing and building the power that is needed.

There is some power presently in old price road corridor, which is along the west side of this area, and there's a transmission extension line that can serve us, and at some point, um, but there will be no scenario where we'll be adding new power lines down price road to serve this project.

Umtel has a load commitment that SRP needs to fulfill, and that is that route outlined in kind of dash blue on there.

This is an exhibit that came from a city resolution and a contract back in 2001 or 2022, and that line shall be installed as per that requirement.

And at some point, if it is installed, then we would be able to have additional access to that too.

If they don't build it, then we'll have to come up with other solutions and opportunities, and that might mean that obligation could also shift to us as well.

But my point in saying all this is I'm not tapping into nothing necessarily present as much as I am building and creating what I need to serve my project.

Another thing I heard was well, how do we know you're actually gonna build what you say you're gonna build?

And there's a phasing commitment that comes along with this.

While we are still in negotiating development agreement, and it is not final, the terms that have been discussed, and we are close to reaching that agreement.

Is number one, we will decommission the water chillers that are burning up a million gallons of water a month, and we'll start that decommissioning in 60 days of the approval of the zoning.

Number two, we'll begin to demolish the buildings and the structures on this property within 90 days of the approval of the zoning.

Number three, while we will give the city's economic department opportunity and time to attract the single user on the front part of the property.

We will also agree that we will commence construction of the two buildings on Dobson Road within 36 months of getting the building permit for the data center, which accelerates the timeline as to what you saw previously in staff's presentation.

The point being that we have been asked to step up.

And so I wouldn't say that I characterize it differently.

We're not being incentivized to build these singular buildings, we're being pushed to build these two buildings on the front.

And similarly with the middle buildings, we will commence the construction of those within 48 months of getting the building permit for the data center.

The point I say that is because you're not getting just a data center.

You're getting a significant degree of employment on the remaining of the property.

But if I don't have a data center, I can't deliver the other buildings.

Simple.

Lastly, there was a question about jobs.

I really want to address that.

Through a development agreement that's been, and this provision came to us from the city, is that we would agree to two jobs for every thousand square feet of occupiable space in the tech park buildings.

And if we miss that number, we pay a penalty fee of $2,000 for every employee short.

So the city itself has secured a guarantee that jobs will come or a very painful penalty that we will pay and lose that.

I also want to take a step back to this commitment here.

I forgot to tell you this.

In addition to the terms that we've been discussing with the city, there's been a request that we will pay $200,000 each year.

We've missed the mark of building the buildings along Dobson Road.

And another 225,000 for every year we miss the mark for building the buildings in the middle.

So in theory, if I fail to perform, then I'm essentially paying the city 425,000 annually until I do perform, plus the jobs that are required to come along with it.

Mr.

Val, can I interrupt one second?

The 400,000 where you were talking about how many years is that for?

Is that for perpetuity or is that a certain time frame?

The the you just talked about the number, if you don't know the 400,000 dollars, it's until we build the buildings.

So it's 20, it could be 20 years or is it five?

Or until the agreement terminates, I guess.

I just want to I wanted to clarify that.

Okay.

You and I talked about it earlier in the week.

So okay, thank you.

So I think these things are really important in the development agreement, which hasn't been finalized, but it is close to being down.

We just met city management and the economic economic department again yesterday.

A lot of this is already what you've seen before, but I think it's really helpful.

One thing I didn't cover there is number um six.

We will build the building directly north of the data center prior to or concurrent with the data center.

So you will actually have employment coming in right away from the very beginning.

And on number nine, um, if there isn't a fear that for some reason the underground of power lines would affect the city's water and sewer lines in the street, we will absorb the cost that by first making the two million dollar payment right off the bat.

And then lastly, I think number eight was highlighted and noted by by the panel, but the AI data center will only be on the west side.

So as I heard from staff, there was a comment that these don't take create the types of jobs that you would expect in this corridor, including high-tech, biomedical aerospace and engineering.

And I see no reason why those jobs can't occur in the five buildings that are being built in addition to the data center.

This is our economic impact study.

This project will be 2.5 billion dollars.

The construction jobs that come along with that are noted there.

But the operational jobs, which is that middle group between permanent and direct and on-site, actually are providing likely more than what was occupying this building during its heyday.

And the longer term impact on this project is tremendous.

I didn't even put the number for what it would cost to permit it and the impact fees in the planner view because I didn't want my client to fire me.

But when you're doing a 2.5 billion dollar project, I can only imagine what type of revenues that brings to the city.

There was another comment from the staff report that, in their opinion, it's not consistent with the goals and policies of the general plan and for the corridor in this area.

And as they pointed out in their presentation, these are the goals and policies of the South Price Road corridor.

But the things that they didn't note were the yellow items, E F H and I.

And it's interesting that when I look at the staff report, they talk about Intel, Wells Fargo, PayPal, and North Grumman.

Well, PayPal is empty, no one's occupying that building.

And Intel and North Grumman are the ones giving notices that they're going to be uh laying off people.

But I want to talk through some of these ones here.

In the policy of the general plan, it says actively preserve and enhance the value of employment reputation in the corridor by giving single users a priority.

Is that not what I'm doing with the whole front side?

And I'm not rushing to build the buildings, but I'm actually giving them a sufficient runway to create those single users.

As you know, no one builds speculative single user buildings, they are purpose-built by user coming to the market.

But now I've given the chance to create that opportunity here.

Talks about maintain expand the campus environment on South Price Road, and I'll get to that in a second.

And to preserve the campus-like environment by ensuring developments that are non-residential nature and center around a common design thing.

So here's what we're proposing 29 acres of knowledge-intensive based industries.

But it still only happens after the city's had enough time to attract that single user.

This is the plan we started with, and I really want to point this out.

This was the very very beginning.

This was the campus plan.

Notice in the staff report, it says this is not a campus-like setting because it lacks a unifying boulevard driveway, no pedestrian connections, doesn't take advantage of the water feature, and buildings should be placed around the water.

When I look at the plan where I start, I go, wow, that's weird.

I got two buildings right around the water.

And I have two boulevards that lead right into the project.

And in the middle, I have a pedestrian gathering area.

And for that pedestrian gathering area, I have walkways that lead to the building to the west and to the south.

And so it's hard for me to work on this case and get a stipulation at the end that says we want you to come back and create a campus plan.

When the very plan I started with was a campus plan.

And then it was felt that perhaps we needed to shield out the data center.

And so as we changed the plan, we came up with this idea with two different lakes, one in the middle, one in the back, and a building that worked to better shield the data center as if it was going to be a nuisance visually.

And this plan was determined that it wasn't an optimal design either.

But I looked at this and go, this still feels campus to me in nature.

And then the feeling was the sentiment was create RD buildings because we need more research and development properties.

And I said, What's that look like?

It looks like smaller buildings with an ability to pull up a box truck and get on the inside, which it's kind of like what we did right here.

And the difference is we created the boulevard directly between the two buildings on Dobson Road.

And at the time we still got comments and feedback then was you know what?

We need a big building in the middle.

And I said, What kind?

Oh, somewhere between 100 to 200,000 square feet.

So that's why we ended up with this version of plan because the two buildings in the middle could be combined or they could be separate, but if they're combined, they would be 200,000 plus only on the ground floor, it doesn't include the upper floor.

And so I say all this because it isn't because we haven't tried or that we haven't wanted to, it's where we started.

It's just as we've gotten this direction after two years, this is where we ended up.

So I I can tell that we're I'm running long, and so I want to just wrap it up with a couple of things.

There's clearly a fundamental difference between a data center for storage, as the analogy was made, versus an AI data center that is for hyper fast computing and language learning models.

It's literally the very definition of a high technology use.

When I look at the general plan, it talks about building heights that are midrise nature.

We've asked for mid-rise.

Our mid-rise applies to the whole property.

So that way, if the single user comes, they can have the ability to take advantage of that.

Our building heights, even though we've designed a building on one floor, they're designed to be two floor, two story appearance, and the ability to have a second floor mezzan on the inside.

They are clearly meets the other goals of general plan where it talks about enhanced corridor aesthetics.

I don't think I've seen better buildings up and down this corridor than what we proposed right here today.

At the end of the day, I love this part of the general plan that was overlooked.

Provide flexibility for vacant parcels.

I'm bringing five tech park buildings that are exactly the industry and types that you want to hear.

I don't have a user from.

At the end of the day, we do observe the other part of the general plan goals that talk about pedestrian pathways, um, connect sidewalks and other um areas to stimulate businesses.

So I have run long.

You've been gracious with your time, and I know you'll have many, many questions.

But as I read the staff report and worked on this for two years, I felt it was important to provide not only the context and the history around it, but all the efforts we've gone to get to here.

And as I look at what we're providing today, we're bringing modern technology that drives new industries and uses to this area.

I create the jobs that you're looking for with the assurances through the development agreement, with the phasing through the development agreement, with our delivery of the necessary infrastructure support instead of relying upon what's in the area.

This is the south end of the price for a quarter, which is very different from the northern parts going forward.

And if we don't put this today, I don't know what will happen and how much longer it will take before this property can have its new opportunity.

A cluster study is only done once every year, 18 months.

So if this opportunity doesn't land and a future user comes, let's say five months down the road, if they need any degree of power, they won't be able to come because they'll have to wait for the next feature cluster study.

So we are the solution for this area.

And I believe we actually do meet the goals and policies of the general plan.

So uh, chairman, members of the commission.

This may have been the longest presentation ever given.

It's also the hardest case I've ever had a view.

And I think it's really important given the uniqueness of it that it that it was given the attention it needs.

So thank you for your time.

Now, I'll answer any questions that you have, and I'll probably only know half of them.

The good thing is I have a uh a series of folks here with me that can provide information that if I'm not able to answer, they can come here.

So, Mr.

Bell, thank you for the lengthy presentation.

Don't go too far.

Um questions.

I want to open up to to my commissioners first, but I do have a comment, and I guess I asked the city attorney.

There is no development agreement that's done, correct?

There's just a lot of ifs and what's and maybes, and I am not aware of the current status of it.

I do not believe that it has been finalized as far as deal points.

So I'm not the attorney that's working on that from our office.

Latest I had heard is that we're not there yet.

Okay, so I just want to clarify there's a lot of ifs and buts and whatevers that might happen that nothing's in concrete yet and signed for.

So I just want to make that point.

So um, and I also want to make another point about I there were some comments about Northrop Grumman laying off people.

Federal projects come and go, that place goes up and down and sideways in terms of employment, and so does Intel.

Intel's right now in a tougher situation, but over the years they've also gone up and down.

So um, I get it.

But I'm gonna open up to the floor.

I see lots of notes being written down.

I'm gonna run into your questions first, and I'll go I'll just go across.

There we're gonna we're gonna ask you have questions of the applicant, then we'll go to the speaker somewhere.

Okay.

Question, sir.

Um Mr.

Bao, if you want to come back up.

I know you probably your feet are tired from Vampers.

Take advantage of this opportunity, Rick.

I get it.

Um Adam, what is the the build time for the data center itself?

Once you receive permits, how long does it take to construct?

Great question.

There's a question regarding build time, then question regarding kind of occupying and filling up.

Jeff the developer, you probably should come up for the records, they can have your name on here, but I'm not gonna answer that question without you.

And if he if he can state his name and address for the record, that'd be great too.

Jeff Sigmer, founder and CEO of active infrastructure.

Thankfully, I'm not paying you by the hour.

I'm not going to do that.

Um can you state your address for the record to 3380 South Price Road, Chandler, Arizona?

Okay, thank you.

It'll take us about two years.

So as Adam has said in the development agreement, we've committed to decommissioning the water chillers within 60 days and start the demolition of 90 days.

The demolition spec right now is going to take approximately six months due to a reduced work hours.

We're not going to go out there at 5:30 in the morning, start using nomadic hammers.

So we're going to do it in a very methodical and smart way.

That'll take us about probably six months to get that down.

Thank you.

Are there other AI data centers similar to this in Arizona currently today?

Well, I agree.

Yeah.

Okay.

As it relates to the cluster study prepared by SRP.

I imagine, well, I guess I'll ask the question.

Did they reach out to you and ask for what your power needs are for both startup and operation through the life cycle of the building?

Sure.

So as Adam mentioned, we've been working on this for about two years.

Two years ago, we submitted what our load ramp was.

And probably about a year ago, they reached out to all everyone who had load requests in and said, we're no longer going to do this serial process where we look at one project, finish that, go to the next.

We're gonna lump everyone together.

So there's 24 projects in what they called the uh pre-cluster cluster because we are not cluster one, cluster one will start next year in April or May.

Um and they have our our anticipated ramp built into that process.

And that ramp is based upon experience you have on other projects, not necessarily in Arizona, but in other parts of the country, or how is that established?

Um it takes into account our normal build-out.

Um doesn't factor in supply chain issues, but historically these chips are coming in and they're being put to work almost immediately.

Uh our ramp since we started has accelerated in other projects, but given if we were to change it with SRP, we would go into the cluster that starts next year.

So to maintain our position, we're keeping our original uh ramp up schedule.

Thank you.

And you mentioned the 24 other projects that contributed information to that.

Did that include speculative undeveloped properties as well?

Did they assign a certain load assumption?

I guess what I'm trying to get a sense of is there pre-planning by SRP on properties that aren't necessarily under development or planned for development.

Did they assign some type of a load with this cluster study?

I'm not familiar with how they're prepared.

So I'm just wondering, are they doing predictions for you know undeveloped properties?

All these projects are real projects prior to let's say the results that came back last week.

Okay.

Um there's one other in the price short quarter, but they don't say I don't know who the other 23 are, but they do say there's two in the price short corridor or process of elimination.

I do think it's at Fry Road expansion that was approved about a year ago, the power for their expansion.

Thank you.

Um can you speak to the concerns that have been brought up from an environmental standpoint?

I know there have been some um concerns by the public um comments that there's potential for I'm not sure if it's a contamination of some kind, but I know you have a closed loop system that Adam's talked about.

Yeah.

Can you speak to that?

So I believe there are there were four letters or emails that were submitted in the last week to talk about PFOS or PFOS, two different types of forever chemicals.

Um that stuff is all around the environment.

Um I guess if we were to swap your screen right now, they'll come up positive for PFOS.

Um biggest contributor of PFOS in the US right now is firefighting foam.

Ironically, next door is the fire fighting uh training facility.

Um second one is Teflon has PFOS, so if you use uh non-stick cookware at home, you're gonna be exposed to PFOS.

Our system is a closed loop system.

You fill it once, there's some cooling in there to some antibacterial that prevents the water or bacteria from growing in there and antiaerobic, some chemicals, but it all stays in there.

We do not need to refill the system after it's filled, except if there was maintenance on a certain area, sometimes, especially when you're dealing with several million dollars of chips, they may drain a single line, it'd be a gallon of 10 gallons max.

Um so that all stays in there.

And if we were to drain that, that goes into the wastewater treatment facility.

I think that's all for now.

Before I move on to the commissioners, have you done one of these centers anywhere yourself, your company?

We are under construction on one right now.

Okay.

So you have none that are operational yet.

No.

Okay.

And the one you're doing someplace else, where's that?

Just Virginia.

I'm sorry.

Virginia.

Virginia.

Okay.

Um so I love the slide that has all the commitments because as we're going through this stuff, you know, we love to trust developers, trust everyone who's doing this.

But if you're making commitments to the community, actually being willing to put them on paper and writing is is amazing.

Um, because I do think that is the fear that a lot of folks have is getting something approved, and you all getting the one building you're really interested in, and everything else, you know, sitting there vacant.

Um, and so I appreciate those.

And if I understand correctly, the commitment is if if the city doesn't find or there is not a single user, once it hits that time frame, you will go vertical and it will be it'll become spec and it'll be marketed as that, correct?

Correct.

Okay.

Um, and then my other question is I know we've thrown around, and I I apologize if I miss it on a slide, um, that the two thousand dollar penalty for uh every employee falling under the uh I believe the two full-time employees per 1,000 feet, but I know we've thrown around a handful of different square footage thing.

Do you have a calculation?

Do you have an idea of how many employees per square?

Like what are we thinking?

So the city I'm sure has this metric of knowing if we don't hit this number, that's where this comes in at.

Well, it let's come back.

This this I'm sorry, I just gotta look at this because this is helping out.

I was do some math here.

If we do mezzanines and and up to the amount that occupies the extra 520 available parking spaces, it could be upwards of a thousand sixty-eight employees, plus that doesn't include what's in the data center.

If we don't do the mezzanines, then you would there would be a number probably between 600 and a thousand.

So is that the plan that that would be part of the development agreement or something that we identify?

It's a term the city gave us in their proposal for the building.

Okay, so this was this is how many square feet we believe without that we're committing to.

This is the amount of employees on.

If we fall below that, that's what it looks like.

Yeah, there isn't a specific commitment on the um square foot threshold of the buildings because there was a step out of by staff that asked us to come back and redesign.

So we couldn't say a certain number because we don't know how the redesign is gonna end up, but as a result, they've changed it to be uh minimum threshold for every occupable square feet.

Okay, great.

Um, I just wanted to make sure that was written down somewhere, so there wasn't the expectation of well, we did do two stories, now we have extra employees or extra fines we weren't thinking of, or the vice versa.

Yeah, in theory, if I could be clear, if we had the mezzanine, the net employment minimum threshold actually goes up.

Yeah, Mr.

Gilson, I just want to clarify again.

There is no GA right now.

These are all what ifs, so I just want to make it clear that it sounds good.

I'm not saying it's not gonna happen.

I just want to make sure that everybody understands until that's signed by the council, and there's I know they're going back and forth, and there's all kinds of other weird stuff in there that I've heard about.

That part's not being disputed questioned or disputed.

That part's not agreed too.

Okay, okay, okay.

Um, and and that's I mean, that's typical.

I I believe I asked earlier that development agreements aren't always ironed out perfectly by the time it gets to us.

That's not unique to this project, correct?

Okay.

Um, so uh so I don't I don't feel like there's any bait and switch being offered here.

I just understand it's part of the process.

Um I think you guys answered a lot of the other questions for me already, so I appreciate it.

You're done.

Yeah, okay.

All right, so I I have a couple of big clarification questions here.

You and your presentation made it sound like you were actually accelerating the schedule for building these buildings, but if your data center and building B are two years of construction after six months of demolition and decommissioning, then you're actually not speeding anything up.

If it's one year after occupancy, it's three years from building permit.

Those are the same numbers, right?

No, I'm not I apologize because it could seem confusing.

Help me let me help clarify.

Originally there was an idea that we would build the buildings along Dobson Road, then a time frame after we got the C of O the data center.

One year and what was written into the uh original PAD, that is correct.

It can take a long time to get all the C of O's for a data uh AI data center of this size.

So that what by the time you complete and get all your final C of O's across the multiple floors, it could be much longer time frame.

So the change and moving it and attachment to the issuance of the building permit of the data center actually moves the schedule up faster than waiting for the C of O for the data center.

Okay.

Um when does the uh two people per thousand square foot take place?

After the speculative buildings are built or after phase one is built.

As each building is built, then that uh provision kicks in.

So as you get a C of O for building B, which is north of the data center, and as you get a C of O for each of the other four buildings, and that job minimum job requirement exists for a five-year term as being negotiated presently.

All right, what's our phase one construction is 500,000 square feet?

Um building uh B directly north of us, that would be the tech park building.

That that job so the two people per thousand square feet is only for buildings B through F?

Correct that okay.

There's no reason why those buildings wouldn't have those ratios if they're RD flex and office buildings.

That doesn't actually sound like an ask.

The ask is the biggest building on here, 430,000 square feet, is gonna have a ratio of 0.2 employees per thousand square feet.

Uh understandably, too, as staff noted, a data center has less employment threshold than the tech park buildings, which is why we're tying this ratio to the tech park buildings.

Can you clarify something?

You just said something about the jobs for thousands for five years, but you said earlier the buildings, if they're not built is in perpetuity.

Can you clarify that which is the correct statement?

Is it only a five-year deal, or is all the if these buildings aren't built, you're gonna pay for the next 15 years, and I don't know where the money's gonna come from, but unless there's a bond put up in front as well.

And I'd kind of like to know that as well.

Is if this isn't done, is there a bond being put up being required?

So Chairman, can I jump in for a second?

And I actually would look to the our city attorney.

Um, most of what is being discussed right now is not a part of the request that is won the purview of planning commission tonight, and I can completely appreciate Adams wanting to plate a contextual picture of the whole thing, but these aren't things that are gonna get negotiated tonight and ever make it into a zoning and PDP approval because it's not gonna have I don't we can't have a parallel stipulations representations and then something in a DEA.

The DA will flush itself out as it goes to council.

This is the land use and PDP package for tonight.

So I don't know if we if we're getting ourselves now.

I fully understand what you're saying.

They brought up those comments, that's why I'm asking.

If they hadn't brought up those comments, I wouldn't bring them up.

They were the ones that's part of their presentation have said the 2,000 you know dollars and all this other stuff.

So that's the only reason I brought up.

I understand this is a land use issue, but it's part of this concept of the picture that they're giving us is all these different things going on.

So that's why I brought it up.

I fully understand what you're saying.

So okay.

Any other comments from the commission?

So if this is such a desirable new form of technology, why do we keep saying you're giving the city the opportunity to bring people in to your property and your development?

Like, shouldn't your facility be a tracking those people?

Absolutely.

That's okay.

That's what will happen with this project.

The city believes that they want to have a single tenant user.

We can fill these five buildings relatively, we're confident that that will happen, but to give the city the opportunity to attract their single user, we're willing to pause the construction of those buildings so they can have that opportunity.

If they can't, we are willing to go forward.

One more question.

Okay.

Um then I'm gonna open up.

I'm gonna go to the reader cards too.

So I think there was one thing that that you'd mentioned earlier, and I didn't quite write it all down.

Um, that might be more within the purview of um the land use.

I think you had mentioned that to for building A to keep that as essentially the only footprint that will be used for the AI data centers that you had mentioned, deed restrictions and something else.

What I didn't catch a second thing that you would were talking about, because I think that is something we want to make sure is it doesn't spill into all the buildings.

So there's two ways to make sure it can encroach outside that boundary.

One is through the zoning case.

So the staff is asked to provide a legal description for that defined area, so we could never change it, sort of coming back to this whole process over again, but then secondly, put a detriction on the property as well that it restricts it to that area.

But then, secondly, put a detriction on the property as well that it restricts it to that area.

So it's essentially double locking it in.

Thank you.

Okay.

We're gonna go to the audience.

I got quite a few speaker cards.

Um these are in no particular order.

I just got them in front of me, so got another one.

Okay.

Um I'm not great with names sometimes.

Ven Simon, yeah.

If you like to come up, it says you'd like to speak on this item.

You can state your name and address for the record.

Thank you.

Uh Bean Simon III, uh, 2312 West Sunrise Place, Channel, Arizona.

I live in the waters at Okatiel.

Um, just right down the street from the project.

I was introduced to this project.

Uh, first of all, I want to just commend you guys all in your thoroughness.

You guys are very especially very thorough, and uh, you guys are very very good at what you do.

I understand what you guys are trying to do and everything.

So I appreciate you guys uh you know get getting on them real, you know, real good to make sure they're doing their job right.

And uh when I listened to them the first time, um, and then I heard it again the second time, it was a repeat of what I heard, and the money that they have to put out for this for this project just out of their pocket, you know, just to get it going, get it started.

The the monthly cost, the yearly cost, it's quite a bit, quite quite a bit, quite a bit.

And then I then I understand that the data centers were were uh 2016, is that what it was?

Uh you some ordinance, whatever it was, right?

Well, you know, just like he talked about this is not our this is not our mom and pop anymore, and we talked about he talked about a phone, you know.

Even today, I can buy an iPhone today, and tomorrow it'll be a different iPhone.

The technology that they're bringing to us is phenomenal.

I mean, it's different from the the criteria that we had before, you know.

And so the criteria that we had before they're they're they're they're our mom and pops now, even though they're what nine years old, you know, whenever that ordinance was they're mom and pops now, they're old, they're antiquated because the technology just changes by the minute.

And with AI data center and the things that he talked about, he wants to please every industry out here from electricity to water use to everything he out there.

He wants to please us all so that we're all absolutely uh uh enamored about having that project.

That project is awesome.

That project is beautiful, it's standalone, it's the best looking project on the corridor.

I've seen the corridor, and then you talked about uh campus.

Well, Wells Fargo is a one business campus, so it's a campus.

This is not a one business uh campus, so I don't understand the campus part, don't understand it at all.

I love the architectural design there, love everything about it.

I live right there, right there.

There's no traffic issues, there's nothing there.

Oh, and then I wanted to ask the smell that's smell.

They don't have nothing to do with that smell, or do they?

They just bought the property, so I don't know, and then trying to again appease us with the smell, they're trying to do anything and everything at all costs to paint a lot of money to to make sure we stay within the parameters, and that needs to change though, because it's not up to date, because we're getting something new, innovative, and exciting with that.

And you know, like you mentioned as well, your son talked in an AI.

AI is is is evolving.

My son uses AI, you know what I mean, and for his job, and he's just like just booming with it.

And it's like, wow, dad, this is great.

And it's like, and I have no idea about any of this stuff.

I don't even like technology.

I mean, my wife asked me my my uh emails, you know what I mean?

I say, yes, my stuff.

I don't want to do that stuff.

They asked me to write a letter, I didn't even write it because I don't want to mess with that.

So I wanted to come in and speak to you guys, and now I spoke to you and heard you guys speak.

It's a it's a great merger, it's a great partnership.

It's one of the best partnerships that I've seen.

I'm from Arizona, and this is not my first rodeo because I'm from Tombstone, Arizona.

Okay.

All right, sir.

Can I get you to wrap it up, please?

Yeah, well, what would you well?

I'm just saying wrap it up to what?

Because I'm telling you guys, you guys heard everything.

Quit tap dancing with them, get them to do whatever you want to do.

They're they're come, they'll compromise.

Quit tap dancing, get it done.

They're spending a lot of freaking money on this.

Quit tap dancing.

Let them know what they want and get it done because that's a lot of money and it's a lot of waste of time.

And that building's been sitting there ugly as all B day, and it ain't gonna go nowhere, and ain't nobody buying it.

They bought it and they and they're trying to do something with it.

So then you know, now that they bought it, they're providing a tax dollar for us, they're providing money for us, they're providing everything that possibly you can for that project, and they're bending over backwards, and you guys bend backwards and let's meet together.

Stop stop all this.

They're spending too damn much money.

Sir, thank you.

Appreciate you.

Okay.

Former Senator Kirsten Cinema.

You'd like to talk.

We have three minutes.

Light will be green when it goes to orange.

You got about 30 seconds when it goes to red after the wrap it up, please.

Thanks so much, Chairman.

Familiar with the process.

First of all, let me start, Chairman and Commissioners, by thanking you so much for your public service.

Um really very deeply appreciate you and um also I'm very grateful to have been retired.

So thank you for allowing me to join you this evening.

I'm here tonight on behalf of Active Infrastructure.

I also am the founder and co-chair of a national coalition called the AI infrastructure coalition.

We are a national coalition formed earlier this year, and we're canned in glove with the Trump administration as we uh prepare for AI American dominance to prepare against a competing theft from China, but also to ensure that uh domestically that we are prepared for the AI revolution that is coming.

It's a pleasure to be here this evening in Chandler, which is the home of the semiconductor revolution.

Chandler was at the very beginning and at the tip of the spear.

You saw the opportunity early and made adjustments through both the uh Chandler um plan in 2016 and the heavy recruitment of semiconductor companies to the corridor.

That puts you at the very forefront of this movement.

We are now at the tip of an AI revolution.

Jeff and his team and active infrastructure have worked tirelessly with city staff and the city council to ensure that this development, not an AI data center, this AI hub meets the ordinance that was passed by the city council in 2022.

We all know that the innovation campus has sat has been vacant for over seven years.

What I'd like you to know today is this.

If we choose not to move forward with this development, the land will continue to sit vacant until federal preemption occurs.

Earlier this year, the AI action plan set out by the Trump administration says very clearly that we must continue to proliferate AI and AI data centers throughout the country.

So federal preemption is coming.

Chandler right now has the opportunity to determine how and when these new innovative AI data centers will be built.

When federal preemption comes, we'll no longer have that privilege.

They will just occur and they will occur in the manner in which they want to occur.

So the old beliefs around recruiting companies and jobs are changing.

And cities must adapt as well.

Now, nine years ago, when Chandler created its general plan, they did an excellent job.

Note that the word, the term AI appears nowhere in the general plan, which makes sense because in 2016 no one was thinking about AI.

But if you look at the spirit of that general plan to diversify knowledge-based industry, that is exactly what this hub will do.

Now I looked at the list of the companies that are right now operating along the price corridor.

At least three of those, at least three of those, are call centers.

Those will cease to exist within five years.

AI will replace call centers as we know it.

That will mean a massive revolution for jobs and job creation in Arizona.

Now, I appreciate the city staff's uh presentation.

And had it been 10 years ago, that would have been an excellent description of data centers and the challenge that it could bring to your corridor.

But what was missing from that is a fundamental lack of understanding about what AI data centers are and the AI-dependent companies that want to co-locate near these AI data centers.

Earlier, Chairman, you said we've got to get more jobs here.

The way to get more jobs in this corridor is to build the compute power that will attract the companies of tomorrow, the compute power that they will need close to them in order to function at the highest levels.

So I would urge, I would urge Chandler to approach the AI revolution the way that you approach the semiconductor revolution.

Think about tomorrow, three years, five years down the road.

Not the language from 10 years ago, which didn't even encompass the idea of the AI technology that we face today.

Our country is facing an AI revolution.

We will dominate.

We will defeat China.

We will have American AI as the dominant force in the globe.

And Arizona is one of five states in the country that is perfectly poised to lead this revolution because of our land, our intellectual talent, our environmental ability to run these power centers over time.

We have an opportunity to lead, just as Chandler has led in the past.

So I'd encourage the Planning Commission to support this effort and understand that this is a critical first step in Arizona and America leading this AI revolution.

Thank you.

Senator, thank you and thank you for your service.

It's probably a little nicer than being in Washington these days.

Much better.

Okay, next one is Cherry Kimball.

State your name and address for the record, that'd be great.

You will have three minutes if we can set the clock.

Terry Kimball, um, I'm the president and CEO of the Chandler Chamber, but I also live, I'm a Chandler resident at 491 West Cherrywood Drive, Chandler, Arizona.

I'm gonna let the experts talk about AI.

Okay, but I want to bring out some additional information and some clarity on some of the things that are happening.

Our workforce is changing here in Chandler.

Yes, Intel and all of those semiconductors have been our leading force in our innovation, and they continue to be.

But it's about the advanced manufacturing that is critical for Chandler's success and future.

We've had a long reputation as a leader in innovation technology and advanced industries.

Continued to growth and depends on investing in infrastructure that support these emerging technologies.

Industry driving innovation, such as artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing and information technology.

The proposed price road corridor innovation center is a forward-looking investment that aligns with Chandler's vision.

Today the City of Chandler posted economic development department posted on their social media that Chandler is home to 337 manufacturing companies, creating over 30,000 jobs here.

This project reinforces Chandler's commitment to attracting the quality employers.

In fact, Chandler Gilbert Community College just got awarded the first four-year degree in AI artificial intelligence in the entire country.

We are continuing to lead the way in educational opportunities.

On that price road corridor, VoyA Financial, they have 700 jobs.

They are no longer on Price Road, they're all completely remote.

PayPal had 2500 jobs.

They're all remote.

Wells Fargo has 4,500 employees, 3500, just under 3,500 are hybrid.

That means that they're in the office two or three days a week, some four, but it's that hybrid workforce.

GM Financial, 1,200 jobs, 700 of those are high bred.

Torreyta Financial Services, we just made that announcement.

They're taking over all four stories where Voyage Financial and that was.

They are bringing people back into the office, but they still have that hybrid component of Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.

I also want to share some other information.

Banner Health has launched an entire AI division, Banner Health here in Chandler.

It's not only to replace humans, but it's also to take a look at their sustainability efforts.

So when you walk into a room, the lights go on and so forth.

There are a number of ways that they're doing that.

Many manufacturers use AI for quality control, robotics, and process optimization.

In fact, the city even used that this evening when creating some of the slides that they had.

23% of all the Chandler jobs or all jobs in Chandler are in manufacturing sector.

Please in closing, Chandler has been a long-standing reputation as a leader in innovation, technology, and advanced industries.

Advanced manufacturing is critical for Chandler.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

The next card I have is Jeff Stickelman.

My name is Jeff Stickleman.

I live at 2477 West Marketplace, Chandler, Arizona.

And I just I want to echo everything that's been said before.

I just want to say I am the president of Siena at Aguatillo, which is directly across the street from uh the proposed um build.

And I've lived there for the last eight years, and seeing that building set vacant kind of hurts my heart because it just looks like it could really use something.

And the gentleman and the staff has really done a great job of putting stuff on the on the market.

And I would say that for me, I would hope that you would agree to let them go forward.

So that's all I have to say.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

Linda Lennox.

Linda, if you can state your name and address for the record, that'd be great.

You have three minutes.

Linda Lennox, 2511, West Queen Creek Drive, Unit 207.

I live in the Caves in Chandler.

When I first came tonight and was reading the information and things, we've been talking about the data center.

So since there's a lot of data centers, it's like, well, why do we need another one?

Well, tonight has brought in two things for me.

One is they've said yes, it's an AI data center.

So we're now into different technology.

It still requires energy.

It's still computing.

So the energy needs are something that, yes, some of it's known, some of them may not be known.

Excuse my voice.

The second thing thought that I have is this is a big project.

This isn't just an AI data center.

You're talking 10 years here to even try to get things done.

Are those buildings going to be empty?

Who's going to come?

It's like build it and they will come.

I don't know if they're really having all these hybrid office hours.

How do we know that they're going to need these buildings?

So I just have some questions or concerns.

And you might think about it as you go through this.

Are they going to be, you know, are they going to rebuild them if somebody wants, if they build a building like this, and then they will somebody else needs it, are they going to rebuild it for that?

Or are they going to make a certain plan and then everybody sticks to that building plan?

The rest of the part of it is pretty nebulous, from what I can tell.

Sorry.

So those are my two things.

You're talking about big 10, 12, 13, 14-year project.

And yes, you need to decide if it's an AI data center, but it's like, is this really what you want to do?

And like they've said, well, it's empty.

This is an opportunity to fill it, but are you going to have four other empty buildings?

I don't know.

I'm not saying you are or you aren't, but I certainly wonder if office buildings are not being utilized.

Is that really the best?

So those are just some of my thoughts.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms.

Lennox.

Appreciate it.

Next card I have Robert Ste.

Robert Stein, 3120 South Dakota place here in Chandler.

So thank you for the time.

I've been a 20-year resident of Chandler.

My other job other than coming here and talking to Rick every so often is I'm our uh for large global engineering firm.

I'm our global VP of semiconductor, and I also help lead our data center uh group.

I've done data centers, AI data centers here in Arizona.

So to answer the question, I forget which commissioner asks, are there any currently operating?

Yes.

That's about all I can tell you from an NDA standpoint.

Um this is more than just about the data center, and I can put a little bit of a global perspective on this.

Um I was just at the Semicon conference last week here here in Phoenix.

There are a number of global firms that want to come here, not only to the United States, but here to Arizona.

This development supports a number of different things on the uh AI standpoint and the RD standpoint.

Uh I just read a recent report out of McKinsey written in 2025.

The next innovation revolution powered by AI.

RD costs have over the last 10 years greatly um expanded.

It's more expensive to do RD.

AI solves that.

Ford-looking companies are redesigning their entire organization around leveraging AI, uh reduces the expense, and uh helps innovate projects at a much greater level.

That's the type of work that Chandler has been built on.

High tech.

It does take infrastructure to do that.

So the the fact that you have an AI data center right next to the RD, that's that's what's needed for that latency for AI machine learning modeling to happen.

That's what it takes.

Now we can put safeguards around that.

What we don't need is on price road, the large giga scale campuses that you you see in the news reports.

That's not what this is.

And I know because I've I've done those two.

We can put those out in the middle of Texas.

That's absolutely fine, right?

This is different.

It's gonna bring jobs, uh, it's gonna support RD for the semiconductor industry, uh, biotech, pharma, you know, in Intel, silicon photonics, quantum compute.

That's what goes on here in this uh in this type of uh atmosphere.

It's going to bring jobs, you know, uh noise, smell, things like that, those can all be engineered for solutions.

So this facility is a good neighbor to the community.

What we don't want to do is lose opportunities where companies come in and they go to ASU research park in Tempe, or they go up to the Halo Vista Tech Park near TSMC.

We want those coming to Chama.

Now I'll design those facilities too up in Hable Vista.

That's fine.

I'd rather design them here in Chandler.

And we need a tech park that supports that.

So I'll leave it with this.

Uh, something my my grandfather told me a long time ago.

And he was a civil engineer.

There's no need to evolve, survival is not mandatory.

If we don't support programs like this, they will go elsewhere.

We need to support this type of uh development.

Thank you.

Okay.

This one's hard to read, but um elzadai.

Sorry if I butchered it, but state your name and address for the record, you'll have three minutes, please.

No worries at all.

Uh Sipand, Alazada, Arizona Technology Council 2800 North Central Avenue, Suite 1530.

It's an honor and privilege to be here today to speak in support of this project.

So while I was getting ready for uh tonight's meeting, I looked at the emails that were sent.

Uh, and two words stood out to me.

Eye sore and disappointment when describing this current site.

Now, as the senator was saying, you know, AI is coming.

Artificial intelligence is coming.

Uh, it this is a job creator.

Just on Friday, Mesa Community College hosted a data center day with over 450 attendees and numerous companies of all different sizes to try to recruit people, try to recruit students, and try to get them jobs.

And these are jobs that pay well with health insurance, dental insurance, and a 401k.

This is a job I wish I had, and I went to law school after I graduated law school.

I was making 40,000 a year, no benefits.

But these are jobs for students who can get them with two-year certifications.

Now, you know, Arizona is really embraced AI data centers, as uh Rob was saying.

Uh as you all may know, recently it was announced a 48.5 million update to our 911 911 dispatch system, and people can now send photos uh to the 911 dispatch system and communicate directly, photos, videos, etc.

This is all possible because of an AI data center.

This would this is I can't only imagine how many lives this is gonna help and how many lives this is gonna save.

And on a more personal note, I can say a data center saved my life last year.

I was in a car accident in July of 2024 in a part of Phoenix I am never in.

And I was in a terrible accident, my car was destroyed.

Phoenix Fire and Medical Rescue arrived on site.

Uh they took my wallet, looked up my name.

In the ambulance, they pulled up my information, and they knew the medicines I was taking.

They knew my pre-existing health conditions.

I went to a hospital, they had again in a part of Phoenix, I'm never in.

They had all this information.

Now I connected with a Phoenix fire chief, assistant fire chief a few weeks later after this accident, and he said that's because of a data center.

So as I stand here before everyone, I see people of all different ages, mothers, brothers, fathers, daughters, grandparents.

Don't you want your family members to be taken care of in a time of need?

Don't you want them to want them to know that they will be in safe hands?

And that is possible because of data centers.

So thank you all very much.

Appreciate your hard work on this.

And let's move this project forward.

Thank you, sir.

Appreciate it.

Okay, Carla Haufer.

If you can state your name and address for the record, it'd be great.

Thank you.

You have three minutes.

Hello, I'm Carla Hofer.

I'm at 2511 West Queen Creek Road in Chandler at the Case.

And good evening to uh Mr.

Chairman and the Commission and Mr.

De La Torre.

Thank you so much for uh hosting us tonight.

I um I'm coming really with a lot of questions, and uh I think that I definitely am 100% in support uh with um the concept of uh tech infrastructure.

I know that it's extremely important, I know that we need it.

Uh I'm the vo the concerns that I have are uh the fact that I live within quarter a quarter mile of this new structure.

And I'm also concerned that I I do have many neighbors here and my husband who I want to recognize, but there are I would say most of my neighbors are not even aware of what's being presented tonight.

And this is the first time that I heard of a new AI data center, which frankly concerns me more.

And the reason it does is because the short and long-term impact of these, even obsolete data centers, much less a brand new AI data center.

I did hear from the developer on POS.

If we were to test now, that's that concerns me.

If we were to test now, those tests should be done.

And and that should be determined now because the decisions that are made today could profoundly impact me, my husband, my neighbors, my family, and most of my neighbors don't even know that this is going on.

So I would challenge, while I am completely open to hearing more about Senator, thank you for the service you've given our country.

I feel honored that you're here with us.

Uh however, I need to know more.

I need to uh know what are the short-term studies, what are the long-term studies, what is our level of PFOS now, and are we going to be following that?

And I'm sure there are all kinds of studies that I'm not even aware of that that uh should be done.

Uh things that I'm concerned about living one quarter mile away from a high-tech brand new state-of-the-art AI data center, hyper fast computing, which I've only heard about this today.

I don't know that any of you, any of my neighbors and my husband had heard of this before.

I I am certain I have the majority of my neighbors don't know.

I I would like to know more about the short and long-term effects of this type of structure, and I don't want to be asked to be a subject in a study five years from now, 10 years from now for people living near high-tech, AI, hyper fast computing data centers.

I feel very strongly that this needs to be held.

I think more testing needs to be done, and I think my neighbors need to be informed, and they all need to weigh in on this, or at least be given the opportunity to weigh in on this.

Several things I'm concerned about.

Health and power exposure.

Um, and I was concerned about this with the old time data centers.

Now I've heard about this new AI hyper fast data center.

Um you know, what are the long-term and short-term health impacts from continuous exposure to high electrical loads, electromagnetic fields, and emissions with this type of facility operating 24-7?

I think we need to be informed as citizens.

We need to know about this, and we need to be allowed to weigh in.

Um, the other thing that I'm concerned about are uh with AI, with artificial intelligence, these centers are consuming more power than ever before.

And what what are those what are those impacts on residents?

What is my health going to look like five years, 10 years, 15 years?

What about our children?

What about the elderly?

I'm concerned about air quality and chemicals.

We had the developer introduce PFAS.

That is a very real thing.

Forever chemicals, and they are biocumulative.

Ma'am, can I ask you just to wrap it up a little bit?

Yeah, absolutely.

And the the last thing I want to say is, and I thank you for bearing with me.

I know I'm over.

Um, what are the cumulative impacts?

I've heard tonight there are 10 data centers within, I know there are five within a mile radius.

Now I've heard 10.

Now, in addition to the impact of all of that, which for the antiquated data centers, we don't have studies.

We don't have short term, we don't have long term.

So we don't know how they're impacting residents.

So what are the cumulative impacts of all of these antiquated data centers?

And in addition to that, this high-speed AI data center, we all need to know as residents.

Thank you so much.

I know I went over.

Thank you.

I appreciate you all.

Uh Dwayne Libman.

Wait, wait, if you can come up to the mic and say that because we can't we can't get another recording, right?

Dwayne Littman, 2301, West Falamino Drive channeler, 41 year channel resident.

Uh I know this area, I believe it's not served by SRP for water.

And so uh the applicant has answered my question about water usage.

Basically, it sounds like they're gonna go with air cool condensing units.

That's a positive.

Uh, I'm assuming they're gonna do some common noise abatement because I was always concerned with the noise with air cool condensing units.

It is impressive that they can serve this with a one-inch water line, which means in reality they won't have a lot of employees there, because there's not a lot of toilet fleshing, but the entire campus, the remaining part of it, uh, can only be served by CAP or groundwater.

So that's a little bit of the unknown as the other buildings on the campus or whatever it is called.

Uh, you know, that's kind of still an unknown as how's that water going to be served and CAP waters at risk at this time.

So that's just my comments.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

I I think that this is under city of water, so the CAP water wouldn't be applied to this.

So that's the last speaker card.

Is there anybody else in the audience who would like to talk on the subject?

If not, Mr.

Bowder, you want to make any further comments, or you've talked for long enough, so okay, great.

Okay.

I'm gonna I'm gonna close the floor then, and I'm gonna comments from the commission or a uh I know there's an alternative motion.

I think it would be appropriate just staff if you want to kind of just run through that so it's on the table if if somebody wants to use that term, alternative motion.

Please, yes, Mr.

Chairman, members of the commission.

The alternative motion um does have uh listed um stipulations for the rezoning and the PDP.

As far as the rezoning uh stipulations, can you throw it up on the screen?

Um I don't have a slide on the slide on okay, that's fine.

Yeah, it's on there, it's in the just oh, it's on that one.

Okay, that's fine.

He but he should throw it up for the audience too, though.

So yeah.

One second.

I can I believe I can pull it up here.

All right, thank you for your patience.

So the alternative motion is to recommend approval subject to conditions.

Again, there's um they're separated by rezoning, and then there's uh preliminary development plan conditions as far as the rezoning, um stipulations one, two, three, four, five, uh, one through five address the land uses that would be permitted under the zoning.

So prime uh stipulation number one limits those uses to knowledge intensive uses, which I talked about in the um in the presentation.

Um stipulation number two limits the uh the data center use as a primary use to the location that it's shown on the site plan.

And stipulation number three um basically identifies that um ancillary data centers would still be allowed in the uh flex um R and D flex buildings.

Uh stipulation number four um excludes uh certain uses such as call centers, warehousing, storage distribution, and other similar uses that don't employ a large workforce.

Uh stipulation number five, ancillary commercial uses um would be allowed and allowed to occupy uh 50 15 percent of the building footprints.

So this would be ancillary commercial uses, such as retail, restaurants, and uh personal services and business services.

Um stipulation number six um is referring to the mid-rise overlay, um capping that at 90 feet for the entire site.

So can I clarify that, David?

So on that particular one, you're saying that every building could be 90 feet on that site if they wanted to?

Potentially, yes.

Okay.

Stipulation number seven requires substantial conformance with the development booklet.

So uh all of the details, um, the architectural design as presented in the booklet, um, the development would be uh required to to conform with that.

Stipulation number eight, nine, um, all the way down to 11 are pretty much uh boilerplate stipulations that we add to every rezoning case, you know, requiring um completion of construction of right-of-way improvements that are standard that are shown in standard details from the city.

Um stipulation number 12 refers to water meters.

Again, this was mentioned in the presentation where a one-inch water meter would be allowed to serve the data center, and then anything in addition to that would require uh an application to our to the city through a sustainable water allocation uh regulation.

So they would have that opportunity to ask for more, but they would need to go through that review process.

Stipulation number 13 um refers to the mechanical um cooling system, basically requires it to be you know, use that closed loop water-based cooling system so that they don't use the water cooling, which they've indicated that they will do.

Number 14, um, all generators shall only be utilized for backup power or if required by SRP during demand response event.

So that this is referring to the generators that are used for backup that all the data centers have.

Moving on to the preliminary development plan, uh stipulation number one again requires substantial conformance with the uh development booklet.

Um stipulation number two just identifies that you know approval of the development booklet is not final development plan approval.

They still need to go through construction uh building permit plan review and and comply with all the the standards and requirements for city code.

Um stipulation number three, a minimum three percent of the required parking spaces shall be electric vehicle charging stations.

Number four, um there's an existing pedestrian crosswalk on Price Road that the orbital sciences uh employs um that it was put in there for them because they used to also um occupy the building on the north side of Price Road.

And so there was a pedestrian connection there to connect both properties, but stipulation number four requires that pedestrian crosswalk to be removed since it is no longer needed.

The stipulation number five uh requires the site plan layout for phases two and three shall be redesigned to create a more campus-like environment that includes utilizing the water feature as a campus focal point by fronting and oriented buildings around it, providing enhanced pedestrian pathway, connecting all the buildings to the water feature and providing a main like bull, a main boulevard-like driveway.

So this is the staff recommendation that I talked about in my presentation to work with the applicants to come up with the a more campus-like design.

And then finally, um the last stipulation, stipulation six under the PDP refers to the phases and it says they have to be consistent with the development booklet.

Unless a DA is approved, which modifies that, then the DEA would supersede that.

Any questions on the uh stipulations for the alternative motion?

Oh, you want to go first?

Okay, Commissioner.

If it needed to go back through redesign, would it come back to us at PZ to approve or if we did go through with this alternative motion?

Or if we did go through with this alternative motion.

Yeah, through the chair.

Uh Commissioner Schwarzer.

So if the commission did not approve it tonight, is that your question?

No, if we did approve it tonight and we had to adhere to the development agreement um stipulation for um redesigning for campus like feel, would it come back to PZ for review?

Got it.

Um the way it's currently, thank you for clarifying that.

The way it's currently written, it would not need to come back for commission.

It would just be between staff and the applicant.

We would do that administratively.

Okay.

So do if the if the commission desired could the commission put in there come back for DRC?

If that's the commission's pleasure, yes.

So it could be if you wanted, I mean, just saying if depending on the motion, that could always be added.

So I I think this is significant enough of a project where that would make sense if it didn't move forward.

Okay.

We'll get to that one.

Commissioner Vilstein.

Thank you.

I want to make sure that we're not in excuse my ignorance here, that um the first and the second uh stipulations are not contradictory of each other, where we say that as we're talking about here, what is a a knowledge intensive use?

And then the second one says in and it's been outlined by staff that that they don't feel like the AI data center or data center is a knowledge intent of use.

But then I know on the second one we're saying it's permitted or uh permitted on exhibit A.

Do we do we need to worry about that at all?

Or is that clearly outlined enough that we're okay with the fact that in one it says that they're not allowed, and two, it says they are.

Oh, I think I think what you've got here, and David can clarify it.

That second one is the data center exhibit A definitely defines the building as the data center.

This is saying that that that's that's representative, my understanding.

So that would be the only building that could represent it other than the 10% ancillary uses, correct David?

That's correct.

Uh Mr.

Chairman, the Commissioner Billstein, great question.

So the step number one basically says over the entire sites, these are the uses that are allowed.

Yeah, it talks about those knowledge intensive uses.

And then step two says in in exhibit A, it defines there's a legal description that defines where the data center is shown.

There you can do a data center as well, in addition to the uses allowed in step number one.

Perfect.

Thank you.

Okay.

Okay.

Chair.

Thank you, Chair.

Um, David, can you clarify for me where the generators are going to be located?

Uh I know we're getting in the weeds here and it's been a long meeting, but I feel that that's an interesting component I'd like to know more about, especially as it relates to impacts to the surrounding area for when they do startups and testing of those.

Yes, uh great question, uh, vice chair through the chair.

Let me bring this up.

Yeah, if if you'd like the applicant to come up and answer, um I'd be that's fine.

That's fine.

Jeff, come on up.

That's fine.

We don't want your attorney to do anything.

I'm not sure if it's being paid by the word or by the way, but tomorrow's your birthday.

Um they're behind the building.

So they're we have the night uh the the 80-ish uh foot tall building and all the generators are behind facing the wastewater treatment plate.

Thank you.

Are they designed to knock off the smell?

Well, I'm glad the city is acknowledged there is a smell and make a problem.

Never never I never denied that.

So I have an additional question for David.

Great.

Um, as it relates to stipulation five under the PDP having to come back and re-evaluate site plan for phases two and three.

We were shown some other various layouts that apparently had been you know, various iterations.

I don't want to commit to anything, but from what I could see there and what I'm trying to understand about this campus theme outlined in the general plan, it feels to me like that's more of what you guys have been asking for as part of your staff report.

Would you agree that some of those prior iterations give you more of that campus feel than what we're presented with?

Uh yeah, through the chair, uh vice chair.

Uh yes, I think absolutely there's elements in those previous versions that that we uh reviewed with the applicants.

There's elements of those that that we think um do target and and get to um the campus-like environment.

Maybe there's some some tweaks um that could be done, uh, but uh but certainly those some of those previous versions were more of a campus-like setting than the the current proposal.

Thank you.

And then finally, in um stipulation six, it refers to phasing outlined in the development booklet.

So, notwithstanding this development agreement that's being discussed and potentially entered into with the attorneys in council.

If this were to be approved or recommended for approval by this body, move forward to council, um, notwithstanding any kind of a development agreement.

Is there anything in that development booklet that holds the developers' feet to the fire from the standpoint of demolishing the building and this phasing timeline?

Are they held to any standards just by the purview of the development booklet, or is it really all relying on the development agreement?

Through the chair, vice chair.

In the development booklet, it identifies the future phases.

So the timing of the future phase.

So phase one would be the data center and building B on the north side of the data center.

It doesn't talk about the demolition and the timeline for that, but it says both of those buildings would be built concurrently.

Phase two in the development book look currently it says those two buildings on the east side along Dodson Road, I think it was E and F, those would be built, or excuse me, those would obtain building permits within 12 months of the certificate of occupancy being issued for the data center.

And then it would be 36 months within the C of O for the data center for the middle buildings for C and D.

So it talks about the timeline of obtaining building permits for phase two and phase three.

Okay, thank you.

But to clarify your question, I think also the based on a development agreement, that could change.

I mean, based on the council could decide with with the attorneys to say, okay, we want to speed this up or not.

So what we would be approving tonight, if that's the commission's desire, it would be what's here today, but it could but it could change.

So yes, I understood that.

I'm just we're not talking about the development agreement and have no purview over that.

So I'm just trying to understand what may be available with.

I just want to clarify that stuff.

So okay.

Any other comments from the commissioners?

One more.

Mr.

Bill Stan.

Thank you, Chair.

Um is the goal or the desire of the city, let's say if you ask the developer to come back and re-evaluate the site plan and make it more campus-like, that those discussions would take place prior to going to council.

Um, I know that it's been discussed that it's been two year process already.

And we want to make sure that if if we have you know a developer who's excited about developing in our city and wants to do it, that we're not throwing maybe undue burden on slowing them down to come back with additional.

Is there is there any mechanism that we can use, or is there any I would look to you for suggestions about how we keep the conversations moving?

Yeah, could you through the chair?

Let me let me address that a little bit.

So if you decide, I mean, theoretically, you could decide to take this to DRC tonight, which would just slow the process down immensely.

I think the concept of earlier putting in potentially if it's the commission's desire to have it go back to DRC or leave it up to the staff to say we've had this happen before, work with this work with staff, if not, then come back that for DRC.

That's another opportunity as well.

So, but I think if you start to delay it, you're gonna end up having you with council's time frames and meeting once a month and things like that, it would slow it down quite a bit.

I think if you put it as stipulation, that would make it a look continue to move on.

There's still a lot more hard work.

I know that between this this DA is going to be a big lift for these guys as well.

So, but I'd hate to slow it down if that's the commission's desire.

Okay.

Any other further questions?

Okay, so somebody want to throw out a motion on the floor.

Vice Chair.

Chair.

Um, I absolutely appreciate and um respect the general plan design guidelines and all of the high criteria that the city of Chandler has always set the bar high in my estimation, and maybe that's just because I've lived here so long and I appreciate everything that uh we see in our city.

Um at the same time, um in looking at the land use, the zoning ordinance um, together with the opportunity for this site to move forward sooner than later.

Um, I had not given much thought to all of the water that is being used.

And as we all know, water is a huge hot button here, especially in Arizona, there's a lot of misconceptions, but we can always be on the cutting edge like we have been for decades when it comes to water savings.

And I truly hope that if this if this were to move forward, that that would remain at the forefront of any kind of obligation for the developer to ensure that that the water is being saved as soon as possible by demolition of the building.

In addition, um I feel that we really are an innovative and a cutting edge community.

So with that, I would move that um planning and zoning commission recommend approval of PLH 24-0046, Price Road Innovation Campus rezoning from planned area development to PAD with the mid-rise overlay up to 90 feet and preliminary development plan approval for a data center in addition to employment use is subject to the following stipulations as outlined by staff.

12 14 stipulations for rezoning, six stipulations for the preliminary development plan.

With the addition into stipulation five of the preliminary development plan that would enable the that would enable a revised site plan incorporating a more campus like environment to be um you you could to be worked out with design review committee.

Yeah, there we go.

I don't know if worked out is the proper word, but if somebody could help me with that, I'd appreciate it.

Or just take the word worked out, just come back through DRC.

Okay, come back through DRC.

I have a motion on the floor.

Do I have a second second?

Okay.

Any further discussion on this?

I'm gonna make a couple of comments before I vote.

Um I appreciate this has been a long process for a lot of people.

Um, and I think obviously AI is going to be very important for the region.

Um, I still have a lot of heartburn on this, and based on the general plan, things like that.

I will be voting no on this.

I don't think um it fits right where it's at.

I've heard all the stories about it's been there empty for seven years, all that kind of things.

But I just feel that based on our general plan, based on the price for a core, based on my experience of what's going on on the quarter, I will be voting no, but I do appreciate the motion.

So any other comments.

Okay, all those in favor of the motion say aye.

Aye, aye.

Any opposed?

Aye.

Hold on.

All those in favor, okay.

Aye, aye.

Okay.

And I and I'll be the only one opposed.

Okay.

So the motion carries five to one.

Um, to the audience, we are recommending body to the city council.

So this is going to council when November 13th.

Okay.

So that will be the opportunity again to talk to council on any concerns or whatever it might be.

Um, but we are recommending body to them.

So okay.

Any comments for the from staff tonight?

Chairman, just really quick, I know it's been long.

Uh, I know I mentioned it last meeting when we went through the briefing on our two code updates.

Um, but I wanted to highlight, I know this kind of overshadowed the majority of what went through the agenda tonight.

Um, but tonight you guys recommended approval of uh our objective design standards.

And while we were prompted to do that at a state level, um, we actually had that on a on a on a board and and on a desired wish list before the state required us to do so.

The interesting thing um is that typically, including my my former boss indicated that almost every jurisdiction he'd ever been a part of that did something like that, spent 18 months and a couple million bucks uh with a consultant, and we did it entirely in-house, and most of the staff sitting here is who actually researched it, drafted it, did it all.

Um, it was an incredible effort.

Um, and I just want to thank them publicly.

It's impressive to know and gentlemen being innovative like we are.

Well, every jurisdiction was required to do this.

I think we're the only one that did it.

Everyone else is sitting back saying we'll see what the state makes us do.

We'll see if the league does something.

Um, we're the only ones that did it, and we did it in-house.

So I just want to highlight this team for doing it, and it is a great document.

Uh we will probably be coming back annually to tweak it as we get to live with it and and experience it.

But uh it was a pretty impressive effort.

So I just want to thank the commission for recommending approval of it and thank our team for crushing it.

Complimentary team again.

Was that Doug Ballard or Hank Plus?

We're just kidding.

Um one comment from the chair.

Uh, there is an election on November 4th.

Their early ballots have already gone out, so I uh encourage people to get your ballot, take a look at it.

There's lots of websites for the the main item for the city of Channel is the city bond election, um, which I help co chair, so I think it's important for people to go out, make sure you vote.

It's all it's a total mail on ballot and stuff.

So any other comments for anybody else?

With that, we are adjourned.