City staffer signed off on $2 billion project under 45-year-old zoning rules
City-council meetings packed with furious residents have become a familiar scene as data-center proposals spark backlash across the country. In Gilroy, California — known as the world’s garlic capital — the $2 billion facility residents are railing against is already being built, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The project was approved last July with a single signature from the town’s community-development director, with no public meetings or votes. The 438,500-square-foot data center is rising on 56 acres of farmland 30 miles south of San Jose, after the city determined the proposal met zoning criteria set 45 years ago for industrial development along a freeway.
“Many if not most residents first learned about this project after construction had already begun,” Coleen Crew, an elementary-school teacher, told the council at a recent meeting.
With public outcry growing over data centers nationwide, local officials and developers have found quieter ways to get projects approved, the Journal reported. Some government leaders signed nondisclosure agreements early in the process; others have steered projects through local zoning codes that sidestep public scrutiny altogether.
Mayor Greg Bozzo said other large industrial projects have been approved the same way over the years without causing an uproar. “It didn’t bother them that a food-distribution center came to Gilroy without their engagement, but now it bothers them that a data center is coming to Gilroy without them having the possibility of engagement,” Bozzo said.
Roger Wehner, vice president of economic development at Amazon Web Services, said the project went through a long approval process that included public notices and public-comment periods. “While the project followed standard approval processes for an industrially zoned parcel, we recognize the community wanted more engagement sooner, and we take that seriously,” Wehner said. “We’ve since met directly with residents and hosted an open house to hear feedback and answer questions.”
The outcry has also pushed city officials to reconsider how they permit large projects. The council is mulling a proposal that would require similar ventures to win approval from the city’s planning commission and mandate that developers hold community meetings and notify people living nearby.
“We…have an opportunity to change the way that we do business in Gilroy,” Bozzo said. “We’re adapting to the times.”
Amazon Web Services applied to build the data center in 2020, after buying a swath of land between a Walmart Supercenter and the Gilroy Premium Outlets. The city conducted a lengthy environmental review of the project, an onerous process developers elsewhere have sought to avoid. But with no public meetings and scant media coverage, few residents knew the project was under way.
Emails obtained by The Wall Street Journal detail how Amazon and the city quietly hammered out a deal over five years. Amazon officials sometimes grew impatient with the slow pace of government bureaucracy: “Our project has faced multiple delays and is now delayed by over a year,” a company representative said in the spring of 2025. City workers, in turn, sometimes appeared to tire of the company’s pushiness, with one writing that “this matter is no longer up for discussion.”
Throughout, both sides were careful about what they shared with the public. When residents raised concerns in January of this year about the potential for battery fires like one in nearby Moss Landing, Gilroy’s fire marshal wrote that “we should be careful to limit the level of technical detail that is distributed publicly” because Amazon’s fire-suppression systems were proprietary. An Amazon official responded that he would figure out what they were “allowed to share with the public.”
After word spread about the project earlier this year, Gilroy resident Rosa Rodriguez wrote to city staff in February asking to comment on the environmental-review report, saying “the damages data centers can cause are irreparable especially when it comes to a state facing drought.” A city planner informed her that the comment period had closed in September 2024, according to the emails.
“These processes were not enough for the citizens of Gilroy to do anything about it,” said Landon Sepulveda, a 21-year-old college student who has helped organize opposition to the project.
Sepulveda said residents in the drought-scorched community are particularly concerned about water use: the data center will use clean water until a system for using wastewater is built. Mayor Bozzo countered that Amazon has promised to build a pipeline, on its own dime, to bring wastewater to the data center. He touted other benefits — more tax revenue, construction jobs and $1 million from the company for the city to buy a new firetruck — and said Amazon also handed out grants to local nonprofits and sponsored the annual Gilroy Garlic Festival.
Residents don’t care about garlic-festival sponsorships, Sepulveda said; they want their city council to tell them about big, important projects and give them a chance to weigh in. “Everyone has jobs, has lives,” he said. “We’ve elected them to tell us, and we shouldn’t have to watch over their shoulders.”