Project Tango representatives are sharing more details about a data center and warehouse site proposed within 200 acres in northern Palm Beach County — fresh off a recently postponed county vote that gives more time to address community concerns.

In the past several months, residents from various neighborhoods in the county have raised concerns about potential environmental, health and safety impacts. Particularly worried are those who live in Arden, the community to the east of the proposed data center site.

In a recent interview with the South Florida Sun Sentinel, Project Tango’s project manager detailed how plans have been revised for the center. Most notably, those plans include reducing the size of the data information and processing buildings and moving them farther west on the site, situated just north of Southern Boulevard near 20 Mile Bend.

The project manager, Ernie Cox, described how they’ve taken steps to design a data center and warehouse project that won’t cause noise pollution, gobble up water resources or hike up utility bills.

Cox said he understands, though, why data center opposition is mounting nationwide.

“There have been some significant abuses,” he said. “There’s some scary data centers out there.”

He said what people are afraid of is not what he and the Project Tango team intend to build.

“We’re not doing jet engines to power the data center. There’s situations where they’re using coal-fired power plants to power the data center. Well, we’re not using a coal-fired power plant,” Cox said. “There’s situations where they use enormous amounts of water. Well, we’re not going to use enormous amounts of water.”

Ahead of county commissioners voting on the project in July, here’s what Project Tango representatives say about the plan.

What’s proposed

When the project first went before the county about a decade ago, it was known as the Central Park Commerce Center, which has a website providing recent information about the project. At the time, the project was approved for nearly 500,000 square feet of light industrial uses and nearly 2.8 million square feet of warehouse.

Even back in 2015, Cox said they were anticipating demand for technology facilities.

“There was a need to bring computing to Florida,” Cox said.

During an information session on April 8, Cox explained the intent for the original approvals was to do a large data center on the site, but the team ran into some challenges over the years, including a major hurricane.

The infrastructure “was not reliable enough at the time,” Cox said at the information session.

Florida also was still shifting from being a tourism and agriculture state to a more high-tech state, Cox said, which also prolonged the process.

But by 2022, the project was approved for more than 200,000 square feet of data and information processing use and about 1.8 million square feet of warehouse space.

The goal for Project Tango, a name Cox said was given by the county’s Business Development Board, ultimately was to expand the data and information processing space. So at the end of 2025, Project Tango proposed nearly 1.8 million square feet of data and information processing space with nearly 2 million square feet of warehouse space.

That proposal proved unpopular, with some county residents saying the project is too big.

Cox said the proposed data and information processing space now has been reduced to a little more than 1 million square feet. Instead of more data center space, the project now proposes an increase in warehouse space from 1.8 million square feet to more than 2.3 million square feet.

The data center buildings also have been moved to the west side of the property, Cox said.

During the April information session, Cox said the tallest component of the data center could be about 90 feet. “These are pretty tall stories. … So 30-foot first floor full of computers, 30-foot second floor full of computers and then about 30 feet of equipment on top,” Cox said.

To address some of the water concerns, Cox said Project Tango will use a closed loop cooling system, which “once you fill that system up, you don’t need to use more water.”

The data center still will use 5,000 gallons of water, which will be used for standard operations such as restrooms, according to a video played during the April information session.

To address noise-pollution concerns, Cox said a sound assessment was conducted and plans were put in place to keep much of the equipment inside buildings to reduce noise. If the project is approved, sound levels are expected to be at about 50 decibels. According to the American Academy of Audiology, 50 decibels is considered a moderate level of noise likened to a running dishwasher, rainfall or a conversation.

The county’s noise limit for industrial uses is 75 decibels, according to county documents.

And Cox said Arden residents won’t see Project Tango’s impact reflected in their utility bills. Though the project is in Florida Power and Light’s service territory, Cox said homeowners are not responsible to pay for it.

“It’s up to us to convince people that we’re building what we say we’re going to build,” Cox said.

‘Does not belong’

Rachel Smith, who lives in the Acreage, which is northeast of the Project Tango site, said she and a few other concerned residents have met with a majority of the commissioners to talk about the project.

“It’s their job to protect us,” Smith said. “It’s really their duty to put the residents over the developers.”

Smith said her fight against Project Tango has become like “a full-time job,” which includes managing the “NO to Project Tango” website.

Reacting to an earlier online version of this Sun Sentinel news article, she emailed the newspaper to challenge many aspects of how Project Tango describes the proposal.

“People everywhere are fighting this,” she said Monday. “There is not enough evidence to prove these (data centers) are safe.”

Another Palm Beach County resident, Ben Brown, said he became somewhat of a “megaphone” to his community after learning about Project Tango’s progress with the county.

Brown is the secretary for the Arden Homeowners Association Board of Directors and spoke to the Sun Sentinel as a concerned Arden homeowner. He said he believes the project is too much and too close to not only the Arden homes but Saddle View Elementary School.

“It just does not belong next to a community,” Brown said.

Arden is a 1,200-acre neighborhood featuring a “community barn with organic produce,” according to Lennar, Arden’s developer. It’s just north of Southern Boulevard, west of Loxahatchee Groves in a northern, unincorporated part of the county.

Arden is one of the last signs of life before a long, rural stretch of land, in which drivers depart from more populous communities and head toward more rural municipalities such as Pahokee and Belle Glade.

Arden embodies a modern lifestyle while still preserving a rural feel, and some people have concerns about how the proposed data center could affect their quality of life, property values and the environment, Brown said.

“We’ll be impacted if they build anything close to what they’re trying to push for,” he said.

Brown’s sentiments are echoed by emails and letters sent to county commissioners, with residents urging them to halt the project.

“Project Tango will permanently alter the character of the region. It introduces an industrial footprint that is completely incompatible with family homes, equestrian properties and the rural-residential environment many of us rely on,” county resident Lisa Lewis wrote.

“There are more appropriate locations — properly zoned and designed for industrial uses — where a project of this size could operate without harming residents, farms and animals. Forcing this development into an area where people and animals live is not only inappropriate but unnecessary.”

Looking forward

On Dec. 10, county commissioners originally were set to vote on Project Tango but postponed the decision to April.

Then, in April, an agent for Project Tango, Joseph Verdone, requested a postponement to July, saying this would “allow sufficient time to make the changes to address concerns.”

In county documents from December, county officials wrote the “overall development is generally compatible and consistent with the surrounding use and character of the surrounding lands. … The uses to the north and west are industrial in nature.”

But county documents also detail conditions the project should meet to address impacts, including designing buildings to dampen sound and adding landscape buffers.

When county commissioners vote in July, they will either approve or deny Project Tango as proposed, which could include 1 million square feet of data center space and about 2.3 million square feet of warehouse.

Commissioner Maria Sachs said she plans to visit Arden in May and speak to the residents there after having visited Project Tango’s proposed site.

“I want to get all the facts first before we begin to analyze what the people of the county want,” Sachs said. “This is a pretty serious issue with regard to the effects it has on the environment and people. … Regardless of opinions, it’s important the county commissioners review carefully the effect it will have on the county.”