Miami Lakes Council to Weigh Data Center Ban

The Town of Miami Lakes will take up a proposal to ban dedicated data centers as a principal land use, a New Business item Councilmember Steven Herzberg placed on the September 15 Regular Council Meeting agenda. The item directs Town staff and the Town Attorney to review the Land Development Code and return with an ordinance defining and prohibiting the use, rather than adopting a ban outright this month.

Why it matters

Miami Lakes’ current code has no separate category for a data center. Section 131-105 lists “data processing” only as one of the typical uses inside the definition of an office building, which Herzberg’s memo says creates ambiguity over how a dedicated facility would be classified if an application came in today. The town is moving to close that gap before an application forces the issue. For a developer holding industrial or commercially zoned land in Miami Lakes, the message is to treat a data-center play there as closed pending the ordinance, and to watch the first-hearing date rather than assume the current code’s silence is an opening. “I believe we should address this issue proactively,” Herzberg wrote.

The numbers

The memo sets a 90- to 120-day timeline from Monday’s discussion to a first hearing on a proposed ordinance. It cites Section 163.326, Florida Statutes, the 2026 law that expressly lets local governments regulate data centers through comprehensive planning and land development codes. The draft carve-out would exempt ordinary server rooms, IT systems and data processing incidental to an otherwise permitted business, meaning the prohibition targets standalone facilities rather than back-office computing inside existing uses. Herzberg’s memo frames the constraint as structural: Miami Lakes is “a compact, primarily residential community with limited commercial and industrial land.”

What’s next

Council discussion begins at the September 15 meeting at Town Hall, 6601 Main Street. A yes vote to proceed would send the drafting work to staff and the Town Attorney, with the memo’s own clock pointing to a first ordinance hearing by roughly mid-December to mid-January. No site-specific application or parcel is named in the item; this is a code amendment ahead of any project. Developers and landowners elsewhere in South Florida holding industrial-zoned sites should expect the same proactive-zoning pattern to keep spreading as more municipalities move ahead of, rather than in reaction to, a data-center application.