The city of Clarksdale is in discussion with a company interested in building a large data center in the Delta town.
During a contentious meeting Monday night, the Board of Commissioners and mayor considered a proposal to rezone an area from commercial and agricultural use to light industrial, as well as a list of stipulations for a potential data center project.
Those stipulations included a $5 million impact fee paid to the city, along with guarantees about water usage and property setbacks. Currently, there are no concrete plans for the site.
The land being considered is 648 acres between the Sunflower River, U.S. 278, Tallahatchie Street and the Roundyard neighborhood.
The board ultimately tabled the discussion without making a decision about the proposal.
“The company that we are in talks with, they are a global company. They want to be a good neighbor,” said Jon Levingston, executive director of the Crossroads Economic Partnership, the economic development organization for Clarksdale and Coahoma County.
City leaders weigh benefits of rezoning
City commissioners also debated possible drawbacks for residents, and the potential for transformative economic development in the shrinking Mississippi Delta city.
“We are here today to change the zone, to open the door for the opportunity to get business here,” said Ward 2 Commissioner Jimmy Harris. “We’re crazy if we shut the door on this.”
Representatives from Clarksdale Public Utilities, which would provide power to the site, rebuffed concerns from city commissioners on the potential for rate increases if a data center was built.
“There is no direct correlation between a data center coming here and a rate increase coming for our citizens,” said Luke Howard, the utility agency’s chief financial officer.
Some, such as Ward 1 Commissioner Ray Sykes, said the public needs clarification about the impacts of constructing a data center.
“Doing my research, I found out that many of the communities felt this wouldn’t happen to them, but it did,” said Ward 4 Commissioner Linda Downing. “But it affected the communities in a negative way. That is a lot of the citizens in Ward 4’s concern.”
Data centers: increasingly scrutinized but still booming
There are five data centers being constructed in Mississippi. Including Clarksdale, there are at least four more centers under consideration.
Elon Musk’s xAI is building a data center and its own power plant in Southaven. The project has generated national attention, including a potential lawsuit over its use of temporary gas turbines to power its data centers. So far, there are no announcements of other data centers relying on temporary turbines in Mississippi.
Data centers are facing increased community pushback in Mississippi and across the country. As the AI boom spurs unprecedented investment into building the physical infrastructure needed, residents say they are concerned about water and power usage, the relatively few jobs created and a lack of transparency about the projects.
However, the projects have spurred demand in the construction industry and are projected to add millions of dollars in new tax revenue to local governments.
Some local business owners are welcoming the potential investment into the financially struggling Delta.
“The only way we can help this community is to be on a global map as a tech leader,” said Clarksdale real estate developer Shiva Adireddi. “We need to do something totally different.”
Levingston emphasized the need for speed with this potential project and urged the board to approve the rezoning.
“Approve the rezoning with these conditions imposed on it,” Levingston said. “We will stand a chance to transform Clarksdale.”
‘Very confusing and very unstructured’ meeting
Despite a call to enter a closed-door executive session, some community members remained at the board meeting and open debate continued.
A majority of the city government later voted to reconsider rezoning with stipulations after a failed earlier motion. They then voted to table a final vote on the zoning with stipulations that might diminish environmental harm for a future meeting.
Downing said these additional votes were not in sufficient view of the public. She said many of her constituents had already left the board room when the vote occurred.
She also believes there are some in the city government that want to remove the restrictions for a potential data center company.
“It was very confusing and very unstructured,” she said.
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