Planning boards will weigh NFR request to modify high energy use industries restrictions

Yahoo

2 days ago

The Niagara Falls City Council has voted to 'accept as complete' a request from Niagara Falls Redevelopment (NFR) asking the city to amend its zoning code and modify recently enacted restrictions on high-energy use industries so that it can move forward with its proposed $1.5 billion data center campus in the South End.
Council members also approved taking on the role of 'Lead Agency' in the environmental review of the proposed zoning code changes.
The vote to accept the change application was 3-2 with Council Members Brian Archie (D), Donta Myles (D) and David Zajac (R) in favor. Council Chair James Perry (D) and Member Traci Bax (R) were opposed.
Perry and Bax attacked the application as an attempt to undue a series of amendments to the Falls zoning code, adopted in 2022, after public protests over noise and other complaints about the operation of high-energy use industries, like data centers and bitcoin mines, in the city.
'This would be the first step in undoing (the high-energy use overlay zoning requirements),' Perry said.
Bax said the council has fought hard, including winning a series of court challenges, to defend the tough restrictions on high-energy use industries.
'We've held the bitcoin operators' feet to the fire,' Bax said. 'We shouldn't stop now.'
Archie noted that the application would be referred to both the city and county planning boards and would need to come back to the council for action after their review.
'I'm OK with it,' the council member said, 'because it's just going to the planning board.'
An attorney for NFR, Melissa Valle, admitted that her clients were looking to change both the city zoning code and the Falls' zoning map. But she called the changes 'minor' and described the noise restrictions as lower than background noise.
'The time is now to revisit this law,' Valle said. 'These are very minor changes.'
The council action will send NFR's request to the Niagara County and city planning boards for hearings and recommendations.
Those agencies are also currently considering an NFR application to establish a Negotiated Planned Development District, also known as a Planned Unit District (PUD) for the purpose of developing its proposed digital data center campus in the South End.
The first stage of the project, which NFR has dubbed 'Data Center at Niagara Digital Campus PUD,' is projected to occupy the same parcel of 12 to 15 acres of prime South End tourist district land that the city has proposed to use for its Centennial Park project. Control of that land has already been awarded to the city through the courts by an eminent domain proceeding.
The city has also recently filed a claim that asserts that roughly 5 acres of the disputed land, formerly the 10th Street Park, was never properly transferred to NFR as part of a 2003 settlement of an earlier lawsuit between the Falls and the South End land owner.
The council has specifically stated that nothing in its actions on NFR's applications 'waives any rights of the city to recover the park property.'
NFR has said its data center campus project 'is anticipated to bring 5,600 jobs to Niagara Falls during construction, as well as more than 550 permanent jobs when all phases of the data center are up and running.'
NFR's original project application, filed in October, was determined to be incomplete by city planners. At close to 700 pages, the application calls for the Data Center at Niagara Digital Campus to be developed in five phases.
The campus would include eight two-story buildings and one one-story building, for a total of 1,232,715 square feet of space. The full development would cover approximately 53 acres of what NFR has described as 'mostly vacant land.'
The property would be bounded by John B. Daly Boulevard, Falls Street, 15th Street and Buffalo Avenue.
Included in the application, in addition to the rezoning request, are copies of traffic and noise studies, an environmental and energy impact plan, a full environment assessment form, a verified ownership petition, a survey and legal description, a historical property assessment, and aerial maps showing the placement of the data center and various other key elements of the plan.
The project application was originally filed just over a month after New York's highest court, the Court of Appeals, rejected a second appeal by NFR seeking to have its justices weigh in on the legality of the use of eminent domain to take NFR's land, described as 907 Falls St. and an adjacent portion of property along John Daly Memorial Parkway, for the proposed Centennial Park project.
The council has also acted to authorize a more than $4 million offer to pay for the eminent domain land parcels.