The Real Story – A Column
Hillsboro, we need to talk.
Back on July 27, when the Hillsboro City Council passed a 120-day land-use moratorium on new data centers and massive Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS), a lot of folks breathed a sigh of relief. We thought City Hall had finally hit the brakes to take back control of our power grid, our water, and our livability.
Well, don’t pop the champagne just yet.
This Wednesday, August 26, at 6:00 PM, the Hillsboro Planning Commission is holding a formal public hearing on Draft Order No. 8502 (Case File CDCA-004-26). If you dig into the staff report and proposed code amendments, what’s being served up as “reform” is looking a bit like a sleight of hand that locks in massive corporate growth while kicking real community protections down the road.
The Game: Understanding Phase 1 vs. Phase 2
Staff has carved the City’s response into two pieces:
Phase 1 (What they want to pass right now): Strictly defines use categories (“Data Storage” and “Energy Storage”) and limits which zoning districts allow them as standalone uses. This is the main topic of the meeting tomorrow night. This is your chance to speak to the City… your last and only chance for this round.
Phase 2 (Kicked down the road to 2027): The real protections—school and park buffers, wetland setbacks, noise controls, green building standards, and mandatory public hearings — are all yet to be discussed. Just not now.
Staff is pushing to pass Phase 1 immediately before the moratorium runs out, while promising that the environmental and neighborhood impacts will be studied by consultants next year.
But folks, we have researched this and drilled down to the core, and Phase 1 has glaring structural loopholes that cannot be ignored.
The Acreage “Caps” Just Rubber-Stamp What’s Already Built
The City claims Phase 1 sets strict limits on data centers by restricting them to two industrial zones: Industrial Park (I-P) and Industrial Sanctuary (I-S).
Look at the City’s own inventory in Exhibit C:
In the I-P Zone: The proposed cap is 215 gross acres. But 203.17 acres across 10 sites are already built or in the pipeline—leaving barely 11.8 acres untouched.
In the I-S Zone: The proposed cap is 310 gross acres. But 292.29 acres across 12 sites are already built or under construction.
The Total: Add in the 83 acres already permitted in Jackson East, and the City is locking in 608.29 gross acres of data centers.
They aren’t cutting back; they’re ratifying the massive footprint already handed out. This is a statement the city is making, and we think it is great. It just does not do much at this late stage in the game, with almost all the land gone.
The “Data Storage” Label Misses the Entire AI Boom
Pay attention to this; it is crucial. The code calls this category “Data Storage Facility”. Staff lifted this language straight out of Business Oregon’s temporary tax-moratorium rule (OAR 123-650-0100). And that is ok but in this case it misses the mark.
Here’s the problem: that rule was written for state tax abatement accountants, not local land-use planners. Storage is about saving static files. But some modern facilities, like the massive GPU and AI deployments going in across North Hillsboro, are pure Artificial Intelligence compute engines. AI chips don’t just store files; they generate new software, models, and digital tokens.
Now, if you are in tech, this will resonate. If you are not, this is a learning moment. While we are all saying “Data Storage” and “Data Centers,” the industry is moving on, in fact, it already has. We have plenty of Data Storage in the US and more in Hillsboro than most of the Pacific NW could ever use. These massive buildings, those already built and those to come, can all become AI Compute facilities simply by swapping out the machines, and there is nothing the city or we can do about it. That is happening in Hillsboro and nationwide.
By anchoring the zoning code to “Data Storage” and omitting physical triggers like contracted megawatts (MW) or rack density (kW/rack), high-priced corporate lawyers can easily argue that their AI GPU clusters are “Advanced Manufacturing” or “High-Tech R&D” exempting them from data center caps altogether.
Key Point: In our opinion, the definition being used for this new code will not stop future projects from moving ahead as new projects that are not required to comply with our new laws. This moment can not pass without this being fixed.
The 30% “Accessory Use” Trojan Horse
Key Point #2: Exhibit A (Section 12.10.370) of the proposed code allows data centers as an “Accessory Use” on industrial sites up to 30% of the gross land acreage.
Under standard zoning law, an accessory use is supposed to be incidental and subordinate. But on a 50-acre industrial site, 30% is a massive 15-acre footprint. Because building height and floor-area ratios are not restricted in Phase 1, a company could build a 4-to-5-story, multi-million-square-foot AI data fortress drawing 100+ megawatts on that 15-acre footprint—dwarfing the supposed “primary” industrial use on the rest of the site.
Take CoreSite on NE Sewell Road, for example, which is a 4-story facility currently undergoing approvals. A 4-story “accessory” buildout on a 15-acre footprint yields over 2.6 million square feet of computing space.
The Solution: Instead of measuring raw land acreage, accessory data and compute space must be strictly capped at 15% to 20% of the primary employment building’s Gross Floor Area (GFA), with a hard connected power cap of 2 to 5 MW.
The Unchecked “Off-Site Capacity Transfer” Backdoor
Proposed Section 12.10.370(4) introduces an unprecedented provision:
“The Data Storage capacity which is allowed as an accessory use meeting the limitations above may be transferred offsite so long as it is still exclusively serving the enterprise functions of the property owner, tenant or partners.”
The draft ordinance provides zero receiving-zone restrictions, distance limits, or auditing standards. This allows corporate entities to distribute massive computing capacity into prohibited zones across Hillsboro under the broad umbrella of “partner enterprise functions”.
Key Point: AT NO TIME in any hearing, during any public meeting, or in any public Council discussion in Hillsboro, was the right to “transfer” rights like these. So this means Data Storage for one business can be held as a negotiable chip and spent or used on lands elsewhere? Where exactly. And where will it be put? I mean, no one watches this stuff more closely than we do. Who brought this up and why? This is sending up red alerts all over the Community right now. Here is another example of how public outcry is not being reflected in policy, and another example of how trust is so very hard to have.
Kicking School Buffers and Public Hearings to 2027
The staff report explicitly confirms that the substantive protections our community requested have been stripped out of Phase 1 and delayed to 2027:
No proximity buffers or setbacks from schools, parks, neighborhoods, and wetlands.
No mandatory Type III public hearings with neighborhood notice for high-density facilities.
No thermal plume, ambient heat island, or noise standards.
No tracking or chain-of-custody oversight for closed-loop chemical coolants and glycols.
Because closed-loop data centers reject 100% of their heat load into the ambient air as sensible heat, multi-megawatt AI clusters act as massive industrial radiators across North Hillsboro. Delaying these environmental reviews leaves our neighborhoods exposed.
How many more Liberty High School, Beaverton Academy of Arts and Sciences, and other schools need to suffer? Could we at least immediately add a 1/2-mile no-build condition for Data Centers, as we do for Cannabis Dispensaries? I mean, look, we do not allow flavored vapes anymore, but a data center is being built next to our kids is fine? What upside-down world are we living in?
Demand Action This Wednesday Night – Be Heard
The Planning Commission needs to hear directly from residents before voting to recommend Order No. 8502 to City Council.
What We Can Ask For:
Regulate by Physical Power, Not Labels: Mandate conditional use review (Type III public hearings) for any facility contracting over 2 MW of electrical capacity or exceeding 15 kW per rack, regardless of whether it calls itself storage, colocation, or manufacturing.
Close the Accessory & Off-Site Loopholes: Eliminate Section 12.10.370(4) off-site transfers entirely, and cap accessory compute at 15–20% of primary building floor area with a strict megawatt ceiling.
Enact Immediate Buffers Now: Implement immediate ¼-mile setbacks from schools, parks, and residential neighborhoods in Phase 1 rather than waiting for 2027.
Hearing Details:
Date: Wednesday, August 26, 2026 at 6:00 PM
Location: Hillsboro Civic Center, 150 E Main Street (or via Zoom)
Matter: Case File CDCA-004-26 / Order No. 8502
PLANNING COMMISSION
MEETING AGENDA – Wednesday, August 26, 2026 – 6:00 PM
Regular Meeting – 6:00 pm – Civic Center Auditorium / Zoom Teleconference
Community Development Code Amendment-004-26: Data and Energy Storage:
Request: Consider making a recommendation to City Council on a Community Development Code Amendment addressing data storage and energy storage use definitions and allowances. Order No. 8502 is available. (Staff: Rachel Marble)
” Could we at least immediately add a 1/2-mile no-build condition for Data Centers, as we do for Cannabis Dispensaries? I mean, look, we do not allow flavored vapes anymore, but a data center is being built next to our kids is fine?”
And that’s the thing: If this was a dispensary or, oh, a second location of Las Gatas that wanted to plant itself across from Liberty High or Fishback Creek, the council would shut it down with haste previously unseen. But because it’s yet another of the 36-and-counting data centers that worked out just fine when they were between the highway and the airport, why WOULDN’T we toss them in with general population and see what happens.
The zoning theater of this meeting is absolutely ridiculous, as the city’s zoning distinctions are simply tossed around town as it sees fit. If I-P or I-S land sits across the street from or abuts residential land, you can guarantee industrial developers will build right up to that boundary without consideration to neighboring properties. And why should they? The city clearly thinks it’s OK!
Any school with a vacant parcel within a half mile of it (Liberty, Beaverton Academy, Evergreen, Tamarack, Butternut Creek, Farmington View) should be clamoring for this restriction.
Kicking safeguards to the future will miss the Many in process already, which in theory, should be about the end of total acres.
On. Their Data Center info page — July 21 last update:
Question regarding Total Number:
“either constructed (16 sites at 346 acres) or are in for permitting/under construction (7 sites at 224 acres).”
Infuriatingly included an increase of 100 acres over the past month’s report (June and July info added the detail of total acres).
= 570 acres
Granted apparently some are in areas besides the two they are proposing —
But I don’t care — Enough is Enough!
Show up— speak up! I also see things in these codes that we have never anticipated. This is being rushed and it has items that have not been discussed. I emailed the staff and the Council yesterday. They say they will be updating today and making some ammendments as a result. But this code change still feels like a hustle, and it should not.