Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Council Rejects Donato Solar Annexation After Strong Resident Opposition
Summary
The DeKalb City Council voted against an annexation and development agreement for a 30-acre Donato Solar project on Peace Road after hours of public comment and a negative Planning & Zoning Commission recommendation.
The DeKalb City Council on Sept. 8 rejected an annexation and development agreement that would have allowed Donato Solar to build a roughly 30-acre ground-mounted solar field and two 6,000-square-foot data-storage buildings on the west side of Peace Road between Greenwood Acres Drive and Challenger Drive. The council vote came after a public hearing with multiple residents urging denial and after the Planning & Zoning Commission recommended against the proposal.
Why it matters: The project drew sharp resident concern about potential local impacts — including noise, property values, energy-grid effects and the possibility the storage buildings could be used for cryptocurrency mining rather than conventional data hosting. Council members framed the decision as weighing neighborhood fit and public input against land-use and economic-development arguments.
The proposal, brought by Donato Solar with operating partner Gale Technology, called for a 4-megawatt solar array, battery systems and two tenant-leased data-storage buildings totaling about 12,000 square feet. Donato planned to…
Already have an account? Log in
Subscribe to keep reading
Unlock the rest of this article — and every article on Citizen Portal.
- Unlimited articles
- AI-powered breakdowns of topics, speakers, decisions, and budgets
- Instant alerts when your location has a new meeting
- Follow topics and more locations
- 1,000 AI Insights / month, plus AI Chat
