Fairbanks borough comprehensive plan heads to hearing without data center ban

The Fairbanks North Star Borough Planning Commission reviewed the final draft of the borough's first new comprehensive plan since 2005 on Tuesday. The draft does not ban data centers, though many public comments asked for one.

Staff gave Nov. 10 as the date of the commission's public hearing on the plan. They said it is on track to reach the Borough Assembly, which must adopt it by ordinance, at a January meeting.

The plan, "A Greater Future for Greater Fairbanks," is a 20-year guide to growth, land use and public investment through 2045. State law requires the borough to keep a comprehensive plan, and it is the legal basis for borough land use rules. Rezonings, code revisions, land use permits, and transportation and capital projects must be supported by it, according to the plan's executive summary.

A mayor-appointed advisory committee guided two and a half years of work on the plan, which drew on three rounds of public workshops and two surveys with 1,518 and 856 responses.

The draft drew more than 180 comments during public review from July 15 through Aug. 15, according to a staff memo. Data centers and community trails came up most often, and many commenters asked for data centers to be prohibited. Long-Range Planner Kayde Whiteside and R&M senior planner Beth McKibben wrote that "prohibiting a land use in a comprehensive plan can be legally and practically problematic." They recommended a focused process to write "legally defensible regulations" instead.

In place of a ban, the draft plan adds a fact box calling data centers an emerging issue that can affect local power and water systems and that are noisier than comparable warehouses. It lists data centers among new technologies that need zoning updates, and until standards exist it would consider conditional use permits as an interim way to permit uses the code does not define.

Sarah Hollister wrote that the interim approach "leaves local communities completely vulnerable" and that residents should not discover after the fact that a "mega-scale, 24/7 industrial AI data center" is moving next to their homes, schools and water tables. Dan Keck argued the plan is too government-centered, writing that it "should remove obstacles to prosperity, not attempt to engineer prosperity."

Separately, on Oct. 22 the Assembly sent Mayor Grier Hopkins' proposed temporary moratorium on large data center permits, which Alaska News reported Oct. 15 would run through 2027, to the Planning Commission. Its recommendation is due within 90 days.

The plan's more than 100 strategies, in five chapters, include small area plans adopted by ordinance, proactive rezoning to match future land use maps, zoning for a variety of housing types and exploring a housing land trust. Each year the borough would track measures including the homelessness rate, the suicide rate and days air quality failed to meet federal standards.

The advisory committee finished its work Sept. 16 with amendments adding mental health, trails, subsistence and aurora viewing to the plan.

On Tuesday, one commissioner asked whether the data center language could be more neutral, and staff said potentially. Another noted that the energy section centers on renewables while the gas line appears only under infrastructure; staff said that could be amended. Staff urged commissioners to draft formal amendments with them before the hearing. More than 900 people on the plan's email list will be invited to comment.