The Wall Street Journal reports that Amazon Web Services is building a $2 billion data center in Gilroy with no public hearings and no mention in the San Jose Mercury News until the construction cranes had gone up.
The Merc’s first story in June was published after the community had discovered on its own that they were getting a 438,500-square-foot data center.
No public hearings
The Amazon project at 8050 Camino Arroyo, near the Leavesley Road interchange on Highway 101, stayed under the radar because it didn’t require public hearings, Planning Commission reviews, or a City Council vote, the Wall Street Journal points out.
Three years ago, on July 3, 2023, Gilroy’s community development director, Sharon Goei, quietly green-lit the project with a single administrative signature. Because it was handled as a routine staff-level approval, there were no public agendas or contentious council meetings to draw the attention of the public or the Mercury News.
The project also was able to avoid public scrutiny by adhering strictly to local industrial zoning rules established in 1981. Because the 56-acre plot of farmland was long designated for heavy industrial use along the Highway 101 freeway, Amazon’s application automatically qualified for a fast-tracked, legal path that bypassed the contemporary public-notice framework.
Public comment period ended
While the city of Gilroy technically issued standard environmental notices when Amazon first applied in 2020, the public comment window quietly ended in September 2024. Because AI and massive data center resource strains were not yet dominant local talking points in 2020–2024, the administrative filing slipped through without drawing flags from residents or local watchdogs, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Cranes and heavy machinery did not physically appear at the Camino Arroyo site until April, after building permits were finalized in March. Only when the massive structure began rising next to the Gilroy Premium Outlets did residents realize what was being built. That prompted the Mercury News to make some phone calls and send out some emails to ask about this project that was going up in the newspaper’s backyard.
Now the Gilroy City Council is facing backlash and is drafting code changes to ensure that future data centers face mandatory community reviews.
Power and water use
When completed, the data center will draw 98 megawatts of electricity, enough power 58,800 to 81,760 homes.
Amazon says it’s spending money to beef up the electrical grid and the data center shouldn’t raise people’s electric bills.
Amazon says its two-building complex will use water for cooling on the hottest days of the year — roughly 3% of the time. Over the course of a year, Amazon says the entire complex will use 4 million gallons of water, which is roughly equivalent to the water used by 36 households. And Amazon says that by 2030, all the water it uses will be recycled.
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