Two Cities, Two Answers: How St. Charles, MO and DeKalb, GA Are Rewriting Data Center Zoning

Data Center Demand and Innovation| Local Governance and Federal Policy

May 20, 2026•7 min read

By Keith Reynolds | Publisher & Editor, ChargedUp!

On May 19, the St. Charles, Missouri City Council voted to effectively ban data centers citywide. The council formally defined the facilities as a distinct land use and excluded them from all permitted zoning categories. Any future data center proposal would now require the council to first reclassify the facilities as a permitted or conditional land use, then go through full public review and approval.

Two days later, the DeKalb County, Georgia Board of Commissioners moved a comprehensive data center text amendment toward final adoption. The DeKalb ordinance creates four tiers of data center development based on size, with graduated setback requirements, transitional buffers, and substation provisions. It permits development. It also constrains it.

Same problem. Opposite responses. Both written by planners working with city attorneys under intense community pressure, both decided in May 2026, both setting precedent that will influence the next two years of data center siting decisions across the country.

For the planning community gathered at NPC26 in Detroit in April, the two ordinances represent the practical fork in the road that the conference identified as the central question of distributed energy planning: how do communities respond to facilities that bring tax revenue, grid stress, water consumption, and neighborhood opposition in the same package?

The St. Charles vote

The St. Charles decision did not happen quickly. The city enacted what officials described as the nation's first data center moratorium in August 2025. Data centers had previously been classified as warehouses under the city's municipal code, which is how Project Cumulus reached the development stage with limited public visibility. The project, proposed near the city's well field, drew thousands of signatures on a residents' petition once it became known.

The May 19 vote does three things. First, it removes the warehouse classification that allowed administrative approval. Second, it creates a separate land use category for data centers. Third, it excludes that category from every permitted zoning district in the city. The combination is a procedural ban: data centers are not prohibited by name, but no zoning district allows them, and the council retains discretionary authority over any rezoning request.

The framing matters. A direct prohibition would face legal challenge under takings or commerce clause arguments. A zoning approach that requires affirmative council action for any project leaves no factual basis for a developer to claim a vested right or an administrative entitlement.

The St. Charles approach also embeds a transparency requirement that Project Cumulus failed. Future proposals must move through formal reclassification, planning commission review, and full public hearing. The community process that residents felt they were denied during Project Cumulus becomes a mandatory step.

The DeKalb framework

The DeKalb County ordinance takes the opposite approach. It permits data center development across multiple zoning districts under tiered conditions that scale with project size.

The framework defines five categories:

Accessory data centers (Under 2,000 square feet): Permitted in Office-Institutional and Office-Distribution districts as accessory uses.
Minor data centers (2,000 - 20,000 square feet): Permitted in light industrial districts without a substation.
Medium data centers (20,000 - 99,999 square feet): Permitted with possible substation provisions.
Major data centers between (100,000 - 499,999 square feet): Permitted with substation requirements.
Campus data centers (500,000 square feet or larger): Defined as geographically contiguous developments of multiple buildings, permitted under the most stringent conditions.

Major and Campus data centers must maintain transitional buffers of 100 feet along all property lines abutting non-industrial uses. No new data center development in light industrial or industrial zoning is permitted within 500 feet of the property line of any residentially zoned parcel.

The ordinance does several things that the St. Charles approach does not. It distinguishes between scales of development. It creates predictable rules that developers can read before designing a site. It addresses noise, visual impact, and adjacency through codified setbacks rather than case-by-case negotiation. Finally, it requires substations and grid infrastructure to be planned alongside the building, not after.

Engage DeKalb, the county's public engagement platform, documents the months of stakeholder review that preceded the ordinance. The framework was built with input from utility representatives, environmental advocates, residential neighborhood associations, and the commercial real estate community.

What the two ordinances share

Both decisions reject the status quo. Until May 2026, most jurisdictions classified data centers under existing warehouse, light industrial, or general commercial zoning categories. The classification was administrative and did not require any specific community engagement. Project Cumulus is the example, but it is not unique. Across the country, data centers proposed in 2022 through 2025 reached development stages with minimal public visibility because the zoning code did not require otherwise.

Both St. Charles and DeKalb concluded that the existing classification framework no longer fits the scale of the development. A 500,000-square-foot data center campus that draws 200 megawatts of power, consumes millions of gallons of water annually, and generates roughly two dozen permanent jobs is not a warehouse. The land use, infrastructure, and community impact profile diverges fundamentally from the categories planners and zoning administrators have historically used.

Both ordinances also assert local authority. The current federal regulatory environment, including the Department of Energy directive to FERC on large load interconnection and the Senate bill exempting fully isolated large loads from federal regulation, trends toward streamlining federal approvals. Local zoning becomes the remaining lever for community-level decision-making. Both St. Charles and DeKalb are using that lever.

What they do differently

The St. Charles ban closes the door. The DeKalb framework requires the developer to walk through it carefully.

The financial consequences for commercial real estate land owners diverge significantly. In St. Charles, industrial parcels that might have attracted data center bids in 2024 or 2025 lose that exit pathway. Owners must underwrite without data center demand, which removes a category of high-price buyer from the market. In DeKalb, the tiered framework preserves data center development as an option but raises the cost of executing it. Setbacks reduce buildable area. Substation requirements add capex. Buffer zones reduce the developable footprint on Major and Campus sites by 15% to 25% relative to as-of-right industrial development.

The planning consequences also diverge. The St. Charles approach concentrates decision authority in the city council, where the legitimacy of any future approval will be tested politically rather than procedurally. The DeKalb approach distributes decision-making between the zoning administrator, the planning commission, and the Board of Commissioners, with each tier of development subject to different processes. The DeKalb framework is more predictable for developers. It is also more administratively complex for the county.

The signal beyond two cities

The May 2026 timing matters because data center development pressure has not slowed. GE Vernova's Q1 2026 earnings reported that data center electrification orders booked in the first quarter alone exceeded all of 2025 combined. JLL's 2026 Data Center Outlook projects 100 gigawatts of new capacity through 2030 and $1.2 trillion in real estate asset value creation. The development wave continues. What is changing is how communities receive it.

Three implications for planners and commercial real estate professionals apply:

Warehouse classification is closing as a path. Communities are moving toward explicit data center categories with codified standards. Developers and brokers operating off pre-2026 zoning research need to refresh their assumptions in every jurisdiction.
Ordinance variation is widening. The St. Charles and DeKalb approaches are at opposite ends of the spectrum. Loudoun County, Virginia is somewhere in the middle. Albemarle County, Virginia is closer to DeKalb. Maryland counties are debating a third path that ties data center approval to state-level energy capacity planning. The patchwork is real, and it requires jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction analysis.
The Energy-Equity Connection framework we developed applies directly. Distributed energy assets that reduce grid impact, alleviate water consumption, and increase local energy autonomy give data center proposals a stronger community case. Operators that come to the table with on-site solar, storage, demand flexibility, and water reuse have measurably better outcomes in zoning reviews than operators that present only the building.

The next round of municipal decisions will not look identical to St. Charles or to DeKalb. They will draw from both. The planners writing the next ordinances should treat the two May 2026 votes as the case studies that define the available range.

Sources and further reading

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Policy and analytical context

St. Charles data center ban DeKalb data center ban

Keith Reynolds

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