Those living across the street from a new data center under construction are raising concerns about potential impacts to the surrounding Ahwatukee community.
Menlo Digital is building a data center campus with five buildings, one million square feet total, a substation. All this, securing 257 megawatts of power.
To put that in context, using peak usage data for srp, that’s roughly enough power to support nearly 58,000 homes.
Craig Evans lives just a few hundred feet away from the project and he is the chair of the newly created Ahwatukee Community Alliance, which is advocating for more answers on the project.
The organization sent many questions to the City of Phoenix surrounding noise, light, pollution, zoning regulations, and heat impacts in the community.
"The technology has its advantages and I don’t want to take anything away from that but there’s a time and a place for everything,” Evans said. “ At 3:30 in the morning, the folks right there backing up to 48th Street, you know, they've got lights coming in their windows and noise coming up and children waking up frightened."
Community members have been holding independent meetings and protests for months, led in part by Taylor Twitchell.
“This is our forever home. We're raising our kids here,” Twitchell said.
The land has been zoned as a commerce park since 1996, allowing light industrial and office use for decades.
“We moved in in 1994,” Evans said. “In '96, '97, I think the idea of a data center was a very different thing than it is in 2026."
The City of Phoenix changed the law surrounding data centers in 2025, adding more restrictions, planning requirements and setbacks.
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"Prior to the adoption of the data center ordinance, data centers were not specifically addressed in the Phoenix Zoning Ordinance and were considered analogous to an office use, a use approved under the property's zoning,” according to the city.
However, the Menlo Digital project received preliminary approvals in 2024, so new changes don’t apply.
“My hope is that the city of Phoenix will say, 'Okay, now that we know better, we're going to do better,’” Twitchell said. "I think we're seeing that a little bit with some of the data center regulations. But unfortunately, we're not seeing we're going to do better in our community, in our neighborhood.”
In response to ABC15 questions, Phoenix Planning and Development sent a statement in part:
"The City of Phoenix is aware of the community concerns and treats all complaints as serious matters; however we are currently unable to provide definitive responses to concerns because the data center is not yet built or operational, and all required plan reviews, permit approvals, and inspections have not been completed. Once the data center becomes built and operational, there will be an opportunity to evaluate the project against City Code."
ABC15 reached out to Menlo Digital and are waiting to hear back.
On their website, the company talks about using air-cooled systems to reduce water use and noise.
"In Phoenix, Northern Virginia, Sunnyvale, and everywhere else we build, the community is now a stakeholder. Water, noise, traffic, and land use all matter,” the company said.
Evans said he does not feel like the community was brought into the process.
“All of this was done without any consultation or coordination with the people that have to live with these results,” Evans said.
Menlo Digital’s website says they are halfway through the permitting process and expect the substation on site to be built by the end of the year and the data hall to be completed in the first few months of 2027.
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