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Roswell committee initiates code changes to exclude data centers from warehouse use and add definitions
Summary
The committee initiated two text amendments to the Unified Development Code to clarify 'warehouse and distribution' uses, explicitly exclude data and digital storage centers from that use, and add a definition for data/digital storage centers so the city can regulate them separately during a moratorium review.
Jeannie Payton, the city’s planning and zoning director, presented two companion text amendments Jan. 13 to sharpen how Roswell defines warehouse, office and related uses and to close a loophole that could allow data centers to be treated as ordinary warehouses or offices.
Payton said the Article 9 change (section 9.6.6) adds the word “physical” to better define warehouse and distribution, clarifies that trailer and box-truck storage are temporary rather than primary uses, and expressly eliminates “data and digital storage centers” from the warehouse use. “We explicitly eliminate data and digital storage centers as a use that's allowed,” she said.
The companion Article 14 amendment (section 14.2) adds a clarified definition for “computer and data processing” and a new definition of “data and digital storage centers” to prevent those facilities from being classified as ordinary office or warehouse uses. Payton said the definitions are intended to close a longstanding gap in the code: “There was lacking any sort of definition of that and that left that hole for someone interpreting a data center as data processing.”
Council members asked whether activities such as cryptocurrency mining would be covered and whether data processing should remain an office use. Payton said staff will refine the definitions during a 90-day moratorium and may add data-mining language; the moratorium will also allow staff to study conditional-use approaches, buffers, noise and utility impacts. “That moratorium gives us that 90-day timeline to begin to research these different tentacles of a use,” she said.
After discussion of zoning interpretations and the pathway for amendments (initiation, planning commission recommendation, first and second readings before mayor and council), Council member Sarah Bon moved to initiate the Article 9 amendment; the motion passed unanimously. The committee also voted unanimously to initiate the Article 14 definitions amendment. Both initiatives will go to the planning commission for review and then return to mayor and council for hearings and votes.
The changes do not adopt final land-use rules; they start the formal process to define and regulate data centers separately and to consider where conditional use, noise mitigation or other limitations are appropriate as staff completes the moratorium study.
