Dental Assisting School Near Loxahatchee, FL

A 1.8-million square-foot data center may be coming to an area near the Arden community in Palm Beach County's western suburbs.

The proposal, called Project Tango, is causing angst for Loxahatchee-area residents who have questions and concerns about industrial noise, diesel emissions, traffic and environmental issues.

“Would any of you want this next to where you live?” asked Jim Riley, an Arden homeowner, during a recent zoning hearing. He and others said they bought in Arden to take advantage of the area's rural character, and that this project would destroy it.

The Zoning Commission voted 8-2 to recommend that the county commission allow the project to move forward. The next step is Dec. 10 when commissioners are scheduled to consider a request to reduce the parking spaces required for the project and to update a previously approved master plan.

The Atlanta-based property owner, WPB Logistics LLC, is collaborating with affiliates of The Hartford insurance companies to develop what would be the first data center in an unincorporated area of the county. There are two data centers currently in West Palm Beach that are smaller in scope and size.

Arden is a master-planned development expected to include more than 2,000 homes across 1,210 acres. Much of it is already built. More than a dozen residents testified at a Zoning Commission hearing last week against the data center. They are likely to testify again against the project on Dec. 10.

The data center would be part of the Central Park Commerce Center, along the north side of Southern Boulevard 4 miles west of Seminole Pratt Whitney Road. The project would also include 1.9 million square feet of warehouses and would be adjacent to a Florida Power & Light Co. energy plant. The applicant said it already has an agreement with FPL to provide electrical power.

This data center would be an AI hyperscale one, a large facility designed to support Artificial Intelligence workloads. To support the growth in AI, companies need powerful data centers that can handle substantial amounts of data and computing tasks.

This is where AI hyperscale data centers come in. They use thousands of servers and specialized hardware to process huge amounts of data and rely on advanced cooling systems to keep the servers running,

They are different from traditional data centers because they are specifically built to handle AI tasks, which require much more computing power and faster data-processing capabilities.

Can the data center builder keep the noise to an acceptable level?

The biggest concern for Arden residents is noise. They are worried the thousands of servers in the data center could produce levels unacceptable to their community and the nearby Saddle Brook Elementary School.

“This is too close to a residential development,” Franklin Trujillo said at the Zoning Commission hearing.

County planners acknowledged that issues would need to be addressed before the project could be built. Their report concluded that the data center operation would require substantial power consumption and large amounts of water for server cooling.

But their report supported the applicant’s requests. The staff said the noise issue and cooling processes will be considered when the applicant submits a site plan. The proposed data center will also need emergency backup power in the event of a power failure. Natural gas service lines will be used.

Katie Tantillo, who identified herself as a Loxahatchee resident, said the elementary school is only 1,000 feet from the proposed data center. She said the cooling towers and chillers will operate at 85–100 decibel levels, a level she said far exceeds what is appropriate near a school.

Data centers also rely on large diesel backup generators, which emit compounds known to harm children’s respiratory health, she said.

Ernie Cox of PBA Holdings, the applicant, acknowledged some data centers generate significant noise.

“This is an important issue for us,” he said. “Before anything is built, we will do a detailed noise analysis study. We don’t want to have an impact on Arden.” He called the site, though, 20 miles inland and 23 feet above sea level, ideal for a data center.

Cox said the data center buildings will be positioned away from the school and Arden to reduce negative impacts.

The county has already approved the site for warehouses and a data center, but one about one-eighth the size of the current plan. Consequently, the applicant needs the county to approve a master plan change and to permit a reduction in parking spaces, as few employees will work inside the data center.

The proposal envisions one parking space per 2,000 square feet. Without the variance, Cox explained that the project would require parking for every 250 square feet, which would force the applicant to build garages that would remain mostly unused.

County Commissioner Maria Sachs said she has received hundreds of emails from county residents upset with the plan for a data center.

“I can’t say how I am going to vote,” Sachs said, “but there are concerns here that need to be addressed. Is this a good location for something like this? Is it too close to Arden and the school? Those are questions I want to see answered. We need data centers, but we cannot have them at the expense of our environment and our residents.”

Mike Diamond is a journalist at, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. He covers Palm Beach County government. You can reach him at . Help support local journalism.

Loxahatchee Area Residents Push Back On Massive ‘Project Tango’ Data Center Plan

LOXAHATCHEE, FL (Boca Post) (Copyright © 2025) — A proposal to dramatically expand an industrial site off Southern Boulevard into a massive AI data center is facing growing resistance from nearby residents, who say “Project Tango” would overwhelm the rural-suburban area with noise, pollution, and higher utility costs.

Palm Beach County is set to consider the application, known as Project Tango (DOA/ZV-2025-01602), as a Development Order Amendment and variance request for the Central Park Commerce Center on roughly 202.67 acres north of Southern Boulevard, about 3.7 miles west of Seminole Pratt Whitney Road.

The project site sits next to the Arden community and near an elementary school, a proximity that has become a central point of concern for residents organizing against the plan.

According to a petition on Change.org, which had 1,163 signatures at the time of this writing, opponents describe Project Tango as “a massive AI Data Center” that would cover more than 200 acres with buildings up to seven stories tall and almost 4 million square feet of space. They argue that the “sheer scale” of the development “poses a substantial threat to the health, safety, and wellbeing” of nearby families.

The petition warns that constant noise from the facility, along with what organizers describe as “the certainty of air and water pollution from its operation,” could have serious consequences for neighbors and for students at the school located roughly 1,200 feet from the site. Petitioners also claim that “our electricity and water rates will rise,” and say they believe “nothing good will come of this for Palm Beach County residents.”

Beyond health and quality-of-life concerns, opponents are also focusing on environmental impacts. The petition says Project Tango would disrupt local agriculture and ecosystems, put wildlife at risk, and threaten “contamination of our air, water, and land.” Residents argue that “our community’s natural resources, our health, and our environment should not be compromised for the benefit of a commercial endeavor that will have limited local impact.”

The county’s zoning notice describes the request as an amendment to the previously approved master plan for the Central Park Commerce Center, an Economic Development Center Multiple Use Planned Development (MUPD). The applicant is asking to add square footage and modify phasing across the full 202.67-acre site, including a request to increase total intensity from 2,020,000 square feet of warehouse and other industrial uses to a maximum of 3,692,000 square feet as allowed by a 2025 county ordinance.

The application also seeks a Type 2 variance to reduce parking requirements for Data and Information Processing uses to one space per 2,000 square feet of data area across the entire property. A similar variance already applies to the original 138 acres of the MUPD; the new request would extend that standard to the full site.

Existing uses on the property include warehouse space, Data and Information Processing, and three non-conforming mine accessory operations — a concrete plant, an asphalt plant, and a contractor storage yard — along with an FPL grid resiliency laydown yard. Under the current approvals, those uses can remain until replaced with Economic Development Center uses in future phases. Access to the project will continue from Southern Boulevard (State Road 80).

Opponents say that while the land has long been industrial, the scale and intensity of Project Tango would fundamentally change what it feels like to live nearby. The petition frames the issue as a choice between local quality of life and a high-intensity technology buildout.

“We urge the Palm Beach County Commission to carefully consider these impacts and explore alternative locations that do not impose such risks on residential communities and sensitive natural areas,” the petition reads. It calls on “local residents, environmentalists, and concerned citizens to stand together against this development” and to sign in order to “protect our community and environment from the irreversible damage that Project Tango will cause.”

The application is scheduled for a Palm Beach County Zoning Commission hearing on December 4, 2025, at 9:00 a.m. at the Vista Center on North Jog Road, followed by a Board of County Commissioners hearing on December 10, 2025, at 9:30 a.m. at the Governmental Center on North Olive Avenue in West Palm Beach.

Residents who want to review the zoning materials can find a summary and map on the county’s zoning hearings website, and those who wish to weigh in on the petition can do so through the online campaign opposing the project at Change.org.

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