By Jaedyn Young, Reno Gazette Journal
Data centers are back on the Reno City Council’s radar, and now the council has voted unanimously to modify the requirements and possibly add regulations to city code.
However, Reno did not put a moratorium on data centers — at least for now. The data center moratorium will return to the council as soon as May 6, at the request of Council members Devon Reese, Naomi Duerr, and Meghan Ebert.
“For me it’s pretty straightforward: we need a pause,” Reese said. “Now some might say ‘why didn’t we do that before?’ Well you can’t put a moratorium or you can’t regulate businesses that are already in the queue … Today we don’t have any in the queue, so it’s a good time for us to put a pause in place.”
Reno senior planner Lauren Knox added that it may come back in a special meeting, but it would return soon. Duerr asked that it come back soon, because when a moratorium is discussed, they usually get a flood of applications looking to get in before it’s enacted.
The idea of pausing data center applications while regulations are discussed has been circulating regionally over the past year. The Sparks City Council voted to start looking into adding regulations, and brainstormed the idea of putting a moratorium in their area.
Reno’s council, however, failed in a vote in February 2025 that proposed adding city code regulations for data centers, after more data centers started popping up in Nevada.
Since then, a handful of centers have been approved by the planning commission and city council.
After hearing nearly three hours of public comment and receiving 155 letters of concern, the council decided to ask staff to bring forward ideas for regulations.
Cullen McGinnis, an organizer with the environmental advocacy group Sierra Club Toiyabe, asked the council to put a temporary moratorium, or a pause on accepting new data center applications, and put strict regulations on data centers in the city code.
“Better late than never I suppose,” McGinnis said, regarding the proposal of regulations. “I’m calling on you all to rectify the mistake made last year when this body failed to pass a moratorium, or formulate regulations around data centers.”
However, the council’s comments were mostly heated about this possible moratorium, which was not on the agenda.
Council member Kathleen Taylor said it wasn’t just the city of Reno, and the timing of bringing up a moratorium was “peculiar.” Ebert said she has been consistent about advocating for more parameters on data centers, and a possible pause, so Reese bringing this up now was “suspect.”
Ebert also said her ward has the most open land for building and since she sees a lot of these data center projects coming in her area, she wants to be heard more on this issue.
What is the current process for data centers to be approved?
Assistant Development Services Director Angela Fuss told council last year the first actual defined “data center” application came to the city in October 2024.
Since then, four data center applications have been approved by the planning commission.
The council approved its first data center in 2025 in the North Valleys, which came to it on appeal. The Webb Data Center is a planned 82,000-square-foot industrial building adjacent to an Amazon warehouse at North Virginia Street and Stead Boulevard.
The requirements for data centers were formally adopted, and separately defined, when the council approved a municipal code in 2025. Data centers fall under the umbrella code requirements for someone developing a warehouse.
Currently, the code addresses general “land-use” requirements for anyone trying to build a development. This includes noise, parking, lighting, building heights and other basic requirements.
So right now, a data center only needs a conditional-use permit to move forward with development. There are no city regulations on water usage, power usage, or noise levels.
The conditional-use permit process requires two to three months of negotiations and discussions with the developers, a public hearing with the planning commission and a possible appeal to the council.
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