[Watch] Minneola data-center ordinance — Draft A or Draft B

Minneola Ordinance 2026-05 (June 1 Planning & Zoning Commission
agenda) is the corpus's first explicit data-center text amendment,
and it arrives as two competing drafts the city must choose between.
Draft A — the "P&Z" version — is exclusion by arithmetic: a 5 MW
power ceiling, a 50,000 gpd cap on reclaimed water only with a 25%
reuse-retention floor, a 10,000 sf building cap, 35-foot height,
a one-acre maximum, 2,500-foot separation, mandatory direct-to-chip
or immersion cooling, and EMF shielding. A single hyperscale center
draws on the order of 1.2 GW and millions of gallons per day, so
Draft A's 5 MW cap is roughly one two-hundred-fortieth of hyperscale
scale — it does not regulate the use so much as zone it out. Draft B
is performance-based admission: 500-foot setbacks, a utility-impact
analysis carrying denial authority, and a Chapter 163
development-agreement option. The drafts are a genuine in-or-out
policy fork — "not here" versus "here, on our terms." The choice is
the leading indicator of whether the US-27 corridor participates in
the Florida data-center buildout at all, made before any local
data-center applicant exists, and made into the active SB 180 freeze
that runs to mid-2028.