AURORA | Amid community backlash against data centers, a group of elected officials from Arapahoe County and nearby municipalities participated in a tour of local data centers in an effort to get more information about the controversial projects.
On Friday, about 40 officials, municipal staff and representatives from Xcel Energy and Core Electric boarded a charter bus for a tour of four data centers in the east metro region. The group included Arapahoe County commissioners Leslie Summey, Rhonda Fields and Jessica Swanson, Colorado Rep. Jamie Jackson, Aurora City Manager Jason Batchelor and council members from Parker and Bennet. No Aurora elected officials took part.
The tour stops included Comcast in Centennial, H5 in Greenwood Village, Flexential in Parker and QTS in Aurora.
“The goal of our tour is to gain as much knowledge as possible about the different types of data centers and how they interact with utilities, local governments and the community,” Summey said.
The Sentinel accompanied the group for a portion of the tour, but was not able to visit QTS because the facility is secure and has specific media protocols.
The group toured the inside of the Comcast facility, which also houses the newsrooms and TV studios for NBC Universal and Telemundo, while the stops at H5 and Flexential were limited to seeing the exterior.
All four data centers are around 250,000 to 300,000 square feet, but range in use type, with QTS being the largest data center in Colorado with a 300,000 square foot hyperscale facility that plans to use 160 megawatts of energy at full capacity.
On the tour elected officials and staff heard from the representatives of Xcel Energy, Core Electric and Comcast about data centers, including their purpose and benefits, energy and water usage, sustainability efforts and more.
Xcel and Core spoke to the ways the electric companies are protecting ratepayers from increases caused by demand from data centers, while Comcast representatives detailed the TV news and data storage operations.
“Data centers do not raise your rates,” Nathan Steele, of Xcel, said. “Data centers pay their own way.”
Rob Osborn, community relations director for Core, added that while other states have seen rate impacts from data centers, Colorado is different because of regulations that require data centers to build their own infrastructure.
Studies focusing primarily on the East Coast and Virginia, sites of numerous data centers, show that in communities where rising infrastructure costs are born by the entire community, rates have risen. Also, some studies show that data centers, among other industries, are given lower rates for electricity than the general public.
The tour was timely as community backlash erupted over a new planned data center in Aurora near the Windler and Green Valley Ranch neighborhoods. Aurora officials are in the process of enacting new regulations for data centers, including a residential buffer and a recently approved prohibition on evaporative cooling.
Proposed Trident data center proposal in northeast sparks anger among residents
Monday’s Aurora City Council meeting featured three hours of public comment opposing what would be Colorado’s largest data center.
Around 100 residents of The Reserve, a local senior housing community, and the surrounding Windler and Green Valley Ranch neighborhoods attended the meeting to voice their concerns and disagreement with the planned Trident data center, located at 23001 East 48th Ave in northeast Aurora.
Before public comment started, City Attorney Pete Schulte asked the audience to stand if they opposed the data center and nearly every attendee stood. No one stood in support of the data center.
Speakers, who ranged in age from 16 to 86, were emphatic in their requests for council to impose regulations on data centers, including residential buffers, and require the Trident data center to have more safeguards for health and the environment.
Dan Bergander, a resident of The Reserve, highlighted the potential health and quality of life impacts the data center will have on older and disabled neighbors. As he spoke, 50 or more people in the audience stood to support him while he spoke and then burst into applause when he finished.
“I’m here speaking for the other at-risk neighbors in the audience and at home, and surprisingly enough, I’m also speaking for your future,” Bergander said. “You on city council will one day settle into retirement and I certainly hope you’re not betrayed by developers and government officials.”
When the comments reached the typical hour limit, council voted 9-1 to hear all of the speakers who signed up, with Council member Curtis Gardner opposed.
Other than some council members thanking the public for attending, the council did not respond to the wave of comments or address the Trident project at Monday’s meeting. Council did unanimously approve a ban on evaporative cooling, which is a more water intensive cooling system used by some data centers.
Planning documents show the Trident data center will be around 860,000 square feet and located in Airport District zoning, which allows data centers as a use by right, which means the project can be approved administratively by the city without a public hearing, unless the project is requesting a variance.
While Trident is not requesting a variance, city spokesperson Jennifer Soules said the city is working with the developer, Vantage Data Centers, to schedule a community meeting, but a date has not yet been set.
A development application and site plan for the data center were first submitted in August 2025 and the project is on its third round of reviews, according to the city.
Neighborhood opposition has grown swiftly, with a local town hall on Sept. 22 drawing about 150 people, while a Change.org petition against the project has more than 2,500 signatures.
Ray Czaplewski, a resident of The Reserve whose home will be about a quarter-mile from the data center, said he found out about the project just two weeks ago from his neighbors. Czaplewski described feeling appalled and betrayed when he found out about the data center.
“We were blindsided by it,” he said. “Never in our wildest dreams would we expect our city government to be complacent with putting in a hyperscale data center literally right next to residential areas.”
Czaplewski said he has a lot of unanswered questions and he raised concerns about noise, air pollution and the toll of the facility on water and energy resources. He also disapproves of the city’s development process allowing data centers without public hearings or notification.
“The use by right categorization in the airport district is designed to be opaque,” Czaplewski said. “If we had known a year ago and knew the magnitude of this, we could have started working with Vantage.”
Czaplewski and other residents want the city to require a fourth review period to ensure all of the concerns are mitigated. Should they not be addressed, the group is considering legal action for possible damages to health and property values, Czaplewski said.
Vantage’s Misty Allen, vice president of public policy for North America, said the company is planning more community outreach as the project moves into construction, including neighborhood meetings and a public website where construction updates will be shared.
“It’s perfectly reasonable when people have questions of new developments coming into their community and it’s our commitment that we will be having open community conversations as the design for the project moves forward,” Allen said. “All of that engagement will start to kick off as the project moves forward, so we’re just at the beginning of this.”
Allen said the meetings will include subject matter experts to answer questions and connect residents to company representatives.
“We’re going to be here for the long-term, so it’s important for folks to get to know the new neighbor in town and to make sure that we have that relationship,” Allen said.
In response to concerns from the community, Allen said the facility will have setbacks which will provide at least a 350-foot buffer from homes, as well as a brick wall and water-wise landscaping surrounding the property. Aurora also restricts the noise level at data centers to the same level as other businesses, with different allowances based on zoning and time.
The data center is expected to use 334 megawatts of energy for computing capacity, which would be more than twice the state’s current largest data center — the 160 megawatt QTS facility, also in Aurora. The facility would use a closed-loop cooling system, which is less water intensive than other cooling systems, and it’s expected to have 28 emergency generators, as well as battery energy storage, Allen said.
“(The generators are) far less than what you would see in a comparable size data center because we’re using the battery storage as well,” Allen said. “We definitely took into consideration how we can be most efficient in this environment.”
Allen said Aurora attracted Vantage’s attention because of a combination of fiber connectivity, power supply and a skilled local workforce. While she said the company is still figuring out the exact number of jobs the facility will ultimately support, the project will employ roughly 1,500 people at peak construction.
The first phase of the project is scheduled to be online in the last quarter of 2028, with construction slated for completion in 2029, Allen said. The facility will be Vantage’s first data center in Colorado, though the company is headquartered in Denver.
Under an agreement with the city approved in June 2025, Vantage could receive up to $38.9 million in tax incentives over 10 years if the facility provides 50 jobs at a minimum salary level. Soules said the incentives are given annually after the company submits a report showing they meet the requirements and if they have not been met, the incentives are not paid out.
Following the 2025 city council election, the council has been less friendly to data centers and is currently considering several regulations for future facilities, including a moratorium on data center tax incentives and a buffer around residential areas.
None of the regulations, including the ban on evaporative cooling passed Monday, would apply to the Trident data center.
Aurora considers second massive data center proposal near Aurora Highlands
Also on the heels of a community uproar over a proposed data center in northeast Aurora, the city is reviewing a second proposal for a 1-million square foot data center near the Aurora Highlands neighborhood.
A development application submitted by Aerotropolis Industrial Development envisions a 1-million square-foot, 11-building data center on a 500-acre site south of East 48th Avenue, north of 26th Avenue, east of Aerotropolis Parkway and west of Monaghan Road.
The project is early on in the development process, so details such as how much power the data center will require and its planned water usage are unclear. The 500-acre data center site would be part of a larger master plan known as the Aerotropolis Logistics Center, which totals more than 1,200 acres and will include an industrial area on the east side and residential and mixed use development on the west.
“The site plan for the Aerotropolis Logistics Center (ALC) is still in its very early stages — the structure and layout of the site are subject to change,” City spokesperson Jennifer Soules said. “The application was determined to be incomplete and has not been accepted for review at this time.”
In addition to the 1-million square-foot Aerotropolis, a nearby site may also host a 300,000 square-foot data center for NTT Global Data Centers, though NTT has not submitted a development application to the city. An incentive agreement for NTT says the 300,000 square-foot data center would be on a 76-acre site in the Aerotropolis Logistics Center.
“We are unable to confirm that NTT is part of the ALC plan as submitted, as NTT is not specified by name in the plan. However, we do know that NTT hopes to develop in the area and entered into an incentive agreement with the city late last year,” Soules said.
Despite not having a development application, the NTT data center received tax incentives through an October 2025 agreement approved by the city council. The data center is eligible for $13.5 million in tax incentives over 10 years so long as the facility supports 27 jobs with salary requirements.
Soules said the incentives are given annually after the company submits a report showing they meet the requirements and if they have not been met, the incentives are not paid out.
A separate project, the Trident data center on East 48th Avenue, recently garnered community outrage for its proximity to the Windler and Green Valley Ranch neighborhoods, including a senior housing development called The Reserve.
Like the Trident project, the Aerotropolis project is in Airport District zoning, which allows data centers as a use by right, which means the project can be approved administratively by the city without a public hearing, unless the project requests a variance.
The Aerotropolis data center would border the Aurora Highlands neighborhood.
A third data center project has started the development application process with the city but has not yet submitted any application or plans, so the proposed location and details are not available in public documents.
The city’s development portal shows the project would be a 1.5 million square-foot data center campus on 260 acres, but does not include a location.
City council is currently considering several regulations for future data centers, including a moratorium on data center tax incentives and a buffer around residential areas, and on Monday passed a prohibition on evaporative cooling, a type of water-intensive cooling system.
New regulations could apply to the Aerotropolis and NTT data centers because neither project has been accepted for review, Soules said. The regulations would have to pass before the data centers have submitted a complete application.