Casa Grande Cleared a 954-Acre Data Center Under Its New Permit Rules

Casa Grande, Arizona, approved its first data center under the permitting rules the city council adopted last year. The Planning and Zoning Commission granted a conditional use permit on October 1 for the Grande Valley campus, roughly 954 acres south of the Maricopa-Casa Grande Highway and west of Montgomery Road. The city said no end user or data center operator has been identified for the site.

Ordinance 3479, adopted in October 2025, made data centers a conditional use in the city's industrial and B-4 zoning districts rather than a use permitted by right. That change forced a public hearing and a commission vote. The commission approved the campus 6-1, according to KJZZ. The permit caps water use at 300 acre-feet a year, about 97 million gallons, with annual reporting, and attaches conditions covering on-site power generation, noise mitigation, fire protection, battery energy storage and hazardous material storage. Neither the permit nor the city's announcement sets a megawatt cap.

The power plan is what reshapes the electrical scope. Primary power is proposed to be generated on site from adjacent natural gas infrastructure, with the applicant's representative describing solid oxide fuel cells rather than combustion turbines. The permit allows a utility interconnection but assigns the cost to the developer. A campus that generates behind the meter pulls generation, medium-voltage distribution and switching into the electrical contract instead of ending the work at a utility service point.

The battery energy storage condition is electrical scope too. Storage written into a permit means DC conductors, inverters, enclosures, fire detection and a commissioning sequence that has to prove the system does what the permit says. Noise limits, hazardous material storage and fire protection are now enforceable permit terms rather than design preferences, which moves plan review and third-party testing earlier in the schedule. The annual water reporting and the eventual disclosure of the campus energy demand and generation mix to the city manager extend metering and monitoring work past startup.

Arizona staffs that work differently from most states. It does not issue a statewide journeyman card. The Registrar of Contractors licenses electrical contractors, with C-11 covering commercial work, and documented hours carry the weight for the qualifying party, generally 8,000 hours of experience. Figures presented at the hearing put the campus at about 1,200 construction jobs during buildout and 445 permanent positions averaging $108,000 a year. The construction number is the one that reaches electrical crews; the permanent count is operations and maintenance.

The permit does not authorize construction. Building, engineering, fire and environmental reviews still have to clear first. Casa Grande has also seen what the ordinance costs: two property owners filed Proposition 207 claims totaling about $146 million over the rule, and the council voted 7-0 in August to waive the permit requirement on a separate 480-acre site in exchange for binding conditions. The ordinance now has a first approval and a first settlement behind it.