By Roland Murphy for AZBEX
Project representatives and local officials have been in discussions over a proposed $12.5B data center in Mohave County for nearly a year-and-a-half, and the appropriate land use, zoning, water and power plans are in place for the project to continue to move forward.
The project may face new challenges, however. Mohave County recently approved a requirement that data centers secure a Special Use Permit to develop in areas zoned for airport uses or light, general or heavy manufacturing, which could add another wrinkle to the proposal. Combined with that, some members of the Board of Supervisors have expressed major reservations about a large-scale data center development near an airport. (AZBEX; Dec. 5)
The County removed data center development as an economic development goal in July. With its approval of the SUP requirement and requiring data centers to provide their own water and power, the County Board of Supervisors joined several other jurisdictions around Arizona in imposing limits and restrictions on the burgeoning project type. (AZBEX; June 18, July 23)
Nothing is written in stone yet. During discussions about the new requirement in the Dec. 1 meeting, County Development Services Director Scott Holtry said the planned Entrata Data Center may be exempt from the requirement, as it has already submitted a preliminary site plan application. There was some confusion from the dais as to the final application to Entrata and another potential data center project that is not as far along in the submittal process.
Entrata project representatives later said it appears the SUP requirement may not apply to their project, but that an absolute determination has not yet been announced.
Entrata Data Center
Publicly available details on the Entrata Data Center proposal are scarce. We first learned of the plan when Kathy Tackett-Hicks of KTH Consulting, one of the project’s representatives, addressed the Board in its Dec. 1 meeting to discuss the SUP requirement.
In association with that article, BEX research staff filed a public records request and received the site plan application and conceptual site plan. We also spoke by telephone with Al Barbarich, Entrata Owner/Developer; Kathy Tackett-Hicks, and Manny Sakellakis, CEO of data center and solar farm developer Clean Cloud Energy.
Barbarich is the owner behind the 10,00-acre Entrata master plan in Mohave County, which was entitled in 2023.
According to the application, which Barbarich explained represents the total potential development scenario, the planned data center could create a capital investment of $12.5B for the powered shell and generate up to 1,200 construction jobs and 150 full-time positions after development.
Barbarich added during the call the estimates are based on a ratio of $10M/MW, with a potential maximum capacity of 1.25GW.
The site plan shows the site is 776.11 acres. It lies just northeast of the dirt runway at White Hills Airport and is split by West Rolling Ridge Drive east of Highway 93, on unincorporated land. Clean Cloud Energy is the project developer, and Atwell, Inc. is the civil engineer.
The conceptual site plan envisions a massive development on the site and includes:
- 34 data center modules of sizes ranging between 500’x500’, 600’x600’ and 500,x720’;
- Three high-voltage substation pads;
- A hybrid cooling and water plant, and
- Nine retention basins of varying sizes.
In her comments to the Board, Tackett-Hicks said the Entrata development team has been working on the data center proposal for a year-and-a-half, and the existing land use and zoning allow for data centers. “If you put on the SUP, it would be another level, and we could not say we’re secured in our land use until we got that done,” she said. “We did want to limit that risk. Absolutely.”
She said the developers had been transparent about the planned data center use and that the Entrata development already has a 100-year Certificate of Assured Water Supply in place from the Arizona Department of Water Resources. “We are placing the data center on existing, zoned industrial property and a portion of our airport development zone, which was also set aside for manufacturing. So, those land uses stick, and the water allocation for the data center, will come from the existing Entrata ADWR water allocation.”
She added, “The water use that ADWR gave to us for manufacturing and airport use is more than the water use for the data center. So, the technology for data centers is rapidly changing. We’re getting a lot better on water use. Every one of those is not a water hog.”
She said she and Barbarich had listened to the concerns surrounding power and water for the planned data center, and the Entrata plan meets the requirements.
In the phone call, Sakellakis explained primary power would come from the Mead Substation in Nevada. Clean Cloud Energy is working with the Western Area Power Administration to finalize details on transporting that power from Mead to the Entrata site. Clean Cloud Energy will also build a solar power project on federal land adjacent to Entrata to serve as a secondary power supply.
Sakellakis said the current plan envisions starting development of the data center and associated projects in 2027 or 2028.
