PARKER, Colo. — Across a vast stretch of sunbaked dirt, a Costco-sized data center is emerging from the landscape.
The center, spanning 249,000 square feet, is taking shape on 17 acres in Parker at the intersection of Compark Boulevard and South Chambers Road. Developed by Flexential, which operates more than 40 data centers across the United States, the $192 million facility will be among the largest data centers in Colorado when it is completed in January 2027.
As the project nears completion, many local residents have taken to social media to say they are only now learning about it, leaving them confused and irked by the scale of the development and how little they knew about it beforehand.
“I found out from a Facebook post about two months ago,” said LJ Lilli, who lives a couple miles away from the developing data center. “The neighborhood… we've seen something being built the last six to eight months, but nobody I spoke with knew what it was.”
Local opposition to data center projects is growing across the country. In 2025, projects valued at at least $156 billion were blocked or delayed amid community resistance and legal challenges, Data Center Watch reported. In May, Denver’s City Council unanimously approved a one-year ban on new data centers in the city.
Concerns about odor and noise have also been raised in other communities near large data centers. In Virginia, for example, residents reported smelling diesel fumes and hearing noisy generators after backup generators were activated during a summer substation failure that forced nearby data centers onto emergency power.
According to the Town of Parker, the project has appeared on its public online development map since 2021, when the proposal was first submitted. Still, many residents said it largely flew under their radar, as did the two public hearings on the data center that they said they were not aware of.
Before construction could begin, the Town of Parker had to amend land-use rules for the Compark Village Planned Development site, where the data center is now being built.
In January 2024, the planning commission — an advisory board appointed by the Parker Town Council — voted unanimously to recommend approval of the data center project. Speakers at that meeting included project representatives and the president and CEO of the Parker Chamber of Commerce TJ Sullivan — all of whom voiced support for the proposal. No one raised opposition during the hearing.
“While this specific project does not have a significant jobs impact, we believe it can act as a seed for more jobs in the tech and information sector,” Sullivan said.
A month later, in February 2024, the Parker Town Council approved the Compark Village Planned Development Sixth Amendment, which rezoned portions of the property to Business Employment and added a data center overlay covering about 26 acres, which permits data centers to be developed in that area.
At that meeting, speakers included project representatives, Parker Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors Chair Jon Rowlett and former Mayor of Parker Mike Waid, all of whom spoke in support of the project.
“If this project would’ve come in front of us while I was in office, there for sure would have been a party. It would’ve had smoked meats and cheese and probably a lot of tequila as well because this is the type of thing we were always looking for back in the day,” Waid, who served as the town’s mayor from 2012 to 2020, said.
Westside Investment Partners is a Denver-based real estate developer that helps plan and secure approvals for large projects, including the Parker data center. For this project, the firm worked with the Town of Parker to rezone the land and add a data center overlay, making the development possible. Flexential is building and will operate the facility.
According to Larry Jacobson, a principal at Westside Investment Partners who made the proposal of the data center at both meetings, the data center will employ roughly 30 to50 employees with salaries around $70,000.
Jacobson said the data center will use a tremendous amount of electricity from CORE Electric — the same utility the town uses — drawing up to 22.5 megawatts. He said that because 7% of electric bills go back to the town as a fee, the increased usage is expected to generate $1.5 million to $1.7 million in net revenue annually over the next decade, a period he described as the data center’s average lifespan.
“In Colorado, we haven’t been great about attracting data centers, for instance there are more in Wyoming than Colorado, just because Wyoming tends to be a more development-friendly environment. Colorado is growing, but I wouldn’t say it’s a major hub yet,” Jacobson said.
But critics of data centers have pointed to that same fact — the amount of energy they consume — as harmful to local communities. Researchers at George Mason University in Virginia this month wrote that data centers “can strain local rivers, aquifers and municipal water systems” and raise energy bills. And a new analysis from The Guardian found that a majority of the new AI data centers in the U.S. are being built on “drought-hit” land.
A bill to set environmental regulations for data center development in Colorado was unanimously voted down in the Senate Transportation and Energy Committee in May. The proposal, introduced by Fort Collins Democratic Sen. Cathy Kipp would have required companies to cover the full cost of the power needed to operate their facilities. It also would have prevented data center growth from jeopardizing the state’s greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets, intended to help limit the worst effects of climate change. Kipp said she is set on bringing back the bill in a future session.
Kitty Little, who has lived in Parker for 25 years, is concerned about the strain data centers could place on Colorado’s limited water resources.
“No one wants this. Especially in a state where our drought conditions have already caused fires when it wasn’t even summer. It’s an abhorrent waste of space and resources,” Little, who lives less than five miles from the developing data center, said.
The Town of Parker website states that the data center will not use water for cooling equipment like some data centers. Instead, it will use a closed-loop cooling system with other materials.
A closed-loop cooling system works by continuously circulating the same fluid through a sealed network of pipes, pulling heat away from servers and releasing it into the outdoor air through large dry coolers, according to Gregor Henze, professor of civil, environmental, and architectural engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder.
“The main advantage of dry closed-loop cooling is its very low water use, which can be important in water-scarce regions,” Henze said. “The tradeoff is somewhat higher electricity consumption, particularly during hot weather when cooling demands are greatest. Potential impacts are therefore more likely to involve energy use, fan noise, and, in rare cases, leaks of cooling fluid.”
Other residents say they feel left out of the decision-making process and have raised questions about the potential impacts of the data center once it becomes operational.
“I live very close to this. There are huge subdivisions, condos, schools and a university within a block,” Allison Koiner, who found out about the data center four months ago, said. “It's all about money and not about the community at all. Wait for the smell and loud constant noise.”