March 19, 2026 | Mark Luis Foster

We’ve been watching the data center incursion across the metro, as they seem to want to crop up in places that crowd the lifestyles of HOAs that are also exploding into empty farm fields across the state. The latest one, and now a casualty, is a site that was proposed for Apple Valley.

The background, according to South Metro Scoop:

In late 2024, Oppidan Investment Company — filed a land use application with Apple Valley for what they called the Apple Valley Technology Park. The site: a 135-acre chunk of the former Fischer Aggregate sand-and-gravel mining operation at Orchard Place, owned by Rockport LLC.

The plan called for seven buildings total — five large data centers plus a couple of smaller support structures — with a total footprint of roughly 1,050,000 square feet. The buildings would have ranged from about 28 feet tall to nearly 85 feet for the biggest two-story structures. It would have been developed in phases over several years.

At a recent meeting, the entire thing was killed.

Here’s the issue: the Orchard Place land is currently zoned Sand and Gravel (SG) — because that’s literally what it’s been used for. Data centers aren’t allowed there. To get a data center built, you’d need to rezone the land to a new category called Mixed Use Business Campus (MUBC).

Apparently, the rezoning could not occur without changing the city’s comprehensive guide plan, the city’s official long-term blueprint for how land gets used.

With the CPA dead, the rezoning had no legal path forward. On March 6, 2026, Oppidan formally withdrew its rezoning application. Rockport LLC followed with a letter withdrawing its consent to the rezoning entirely.

And we always hear about the water usage.  What about that?

Rockport tried to work around it late in 2025 by proposing private on-site water wells, citing informal support from the Minnesota DNR. But the city said it would need to commission its own study to assess impacts on municipal wells and nearby surface water — and wanted Rockport to put money in escrow to fund that study. The impasse never resolved. You can read more about Minnesota’s broader data center regulatory challenges — including issues with backup power permits …

Another one bites the dust.  Read the article HERE.