It still needs City Council approval, but the Ankeny Planning and Zoning Commission has taken action that would allow for the construction of the city’s first data center.

The commission voted on April 2 to amend the planned unit development plan for more than 35 acres in the Crosswinds Business Park, east of Interstate 35 and north of Interstate 80.

The request was made by Snyder & Associates on behalf of an entity called Commerce Center LLC. The amendment was also requested to include the construction of an electrical substation on the site.

According to the secretary of state’s website, the registered agent for Commerce Center LLC is David Hansen, president of Signature Commercial Real Estate. Hansen said he could not discuss the project due to a confidentiality agreement.

Derek Lord, Ankeny’s director of economic development, said the area had originally included a plan for two large warehouse distribution centers. The property owner requested the amendment to allow for one large flex warehouse building and a small data center and the substation.

The zoning that was approved would only allow a data center to be built. The next steps would be site plan approval and a potential development agreement before any construction would begin.

“There’s a lot of moving parts and pieces, and getting the zoning in place is one step in the process, but there’s still a lot of work to do before we see any development on that site,” Lord said.

He said he does not know who the data center would be built for but said it would be a smaller facility, unlike the other big data centers in the region operated by tech giants like Google, Microsoft and Meta.

“There’s a couple of different models where you have owner occupants, take the the big tech companies, but then there’s — and you’ve already seen it in the Des Moines metro — where there’s smaller data centers that lease space for other companies to place their servers to store data inside a centralized data center,” he said. “It’s a model that exists throughout the country,  but because Central Iowa has so many of the big tech companies and mega data centers, that market is often overlooked.”

It will now go before the City Council for a public hearing on April 15, followed by the first reading by the council for approval on May 6.