Palmetto Bay Vice Mayor Moves to Ban Data Centers Outright

Palmetto Bay Vice Mayor Mark Merwitzer said this month he plans to introduce legislation banning data centers outright inside the Miami-Dade village, a category-wide prohibition rather than a fight over any single project. It makes Palmetto Bay the third South Florida jurisdiction to move against the industry since July, and the first to act at the municipal rather than county level.

Why it matters

Merwitzer’s move follows a summer of escalating South Florida resistance to data center siting. Palm Beach County froze new applications in July, denied the Project Tango proposal in Loxahatchee, and had its Zoning Commission recommend a year-long moratorium in August, with adoption votes set for late August and September. Miami-Dade County staff separately proposed writing data centers out of a new industrial land-use category, headed to a final commission vote next month. Palmetto Bay would go further than either: an outright ban inside village limits, not a pause or a carve-out. As an incorporated village, Palmetto Bay holds home-rule zoning authority that unincorporated Miami-Dade communities lack. Iron Mountain’s 150,000-square-foot MIA-1 data center in nearby Westview, an unincorporated, predominantly Black community, was permitted by right as a “telecommunications hub” under county code, drawing resident objections that it was approved with limited public notice. “We’re not going to let data centers wreck that,” Merwitzer said of the village, in a news release quoted by Axios Miami.

The numbers

Roughly 27 data centers already operate in the greater Miami area, part of more than 100 statewide, according to Data Center Map figures cited by Axios Miami. Palmetto Bay is the third South Florida jurisdiction in about six weeks to move against data center siting, following Palm Beach County and Miami-Dade County, per our tracking of the region’s zoning actions. Only one hyperscale data center has been approved statewide under Florida’s new large-load review law, and it now faces two lawsuits and a recall effort, Axios reported.

What’s next

Merwitzer has not set a hearing date, and no ordinance had been filed on Palmetto Bay’s council calendar as of this week. Miami-Dade County’s industrial-category amendment reaches a final commission vote Sept. 24, the same day Palm Beach County’s zoning freeze is scheduled for adoption. Developers and site selectors chasing large-load sites in South Florida now have three separate fronts to track instead of one, each narrowing where the AI power buildout can physically land.