Ames council hears LightEdge pitch for 100,000‑sq‑ft colocation data center; no decision tonight

Ames City Council heard a staff presentation and a developer briefing June 23 on LightEdge’s request to negotiate a lease for roughly a 10.86‑acre site at the Ames Municipal Airport to build an edge colocation data center.

Assistant City Manager Brian Phillips told the council the company’s letter arrived May 8 and staff is treating tonight’s briefing as informational. Phillips said the site is designated non‑aeronautical in the airport master plan, already zoned planned industrial, and is offered by staff as a lease rather than an outright sale because FAA and airport planning considerations favor leases. He said lease revenue must be reinvested in airport operations under FAA rules.

The LightEdge team — led by Chief Marketing Officer Matt Begacki and development vice president Mike McDaniel — described the proposal as an edge colocation facility intended to host racks and servers for local and regional customers, not a hyperscale AI campus. Begacki said the company’s Altoona facility is a comparable operation and invited council members to inspect it.

Staff and LightEdge outlined a three‑phase build concept. The initial shell would be about 100,000 square feet with an electrical demand in the neighborhood of 3 megawatts. Subsequent phases could expand to roughly 10 megawatts and ultimately to about 25 megawatts over a multiyear horizon, depending on customer demand.

Don (Ames Electric director) told the council the city can serve up to about 3 megawatts at the proposed airport site using existing distribution. If the project grows beyond 3 megawatts, the utility would likely need to build a dedicated feeder (preliminarily estimated at about $4 million and a ~3‑year lead time). For a full phase‑3 buildout, the utility estimated a dedicated substation (roughly $12 million and a ~5‑year planning horizon) would be required, and transformers can have long lead times.

On generation and market solutions, staff explained two principal options: the customer could bring on‑site generation and participate in MISO (the regional transmission operator) capacity constructs, or the city could procure capacity on the customer’s behalf and pass costs through to the customer by contract so other ratepayers are not affected.

Council members asked about water use, noise, backup generation and carbon/renewable impacts. LightEdge’s technical staff described a closed‑loop cooling system that requires an initial fill of a few thousand gallons and that routine water use would be limited to domestic needs; they said refills would be occasional and the system uses water in a contained loop rather than a water‑loss cooling tower. LightEdge said backup diesel generators would be installed in sound‑attenuating enclosures and tested quarterly under standard operating procedures.

Staff said the council’s available tools vary by site: a development on airport property would allow lease conditions, zoning and utility agreements to shape building orientation, externalities (sound, light), and obligations; a site off municipal utility territory would rely chiefly on zoning. Phillips told council a city‑attorney memo on regulatory options (zoning changes, utility terms, moratoriums) will be delivered in roughly three weeks, and the council will receive public input during a June 30 listening session before deciding whether to authorize staff to negotiate with LightEdge.

The mayor and multiple council members repeatedly emphasized that no binding decisions would be made at the June 23 meeting and invited residents to use the June 30 forum to present concerns and information. The council also postponed consideration of a separate rezoning application for 300 Airport Road until after public input and the attorney’s report.