Mattoon City Council has enacted a one-year moratorium on large-scale data center developments, joining a growing list of local communities that are hitting the pause button on a potential project of that size; while local officials figure out how to regulate it.
The council adopted Resolution Number 2026-3352 just yesterday (September 1st,) freezing new zoning applications, building permits, and licenses for any data center project larger than 21,780 square feet, which works out to be roughly half an acre, that would fall within city limits and the surrounding mile-and-a-half zone the city also does have authority over.
The resolution doesn’t target a specific project or developer… which likely means Mattoon has only been prospected as a potential site. Instead, City Council Members took a proactive step meant to give Mattoon time to study how a large data center could affect the community before any proposal moves forward. According to the resolution, the council determined that the city’s current zoning ordinances, development regulations, and building codes may not be equipped to handle the “unique demands” these facilities require, from power consumption and water use for cooling, to stormwater management, transportation, and emergency services.
That concern isn’t unique to Mattoon. Data centers have expanded rapidly nationwide as demand for AI and cloud computing has grown, and with that growth has come a wave of local and state moratoriums, more than 200 municipalities across the country have enacted similar temporary stops in recent years. The reasons tend to be consistent from town to town: massive electrical demand that could affect utility rates for residents, millions of gallons of water used daily to cool server racks, and zoning codes that were never written with facilities this large in mind. Some states, including New York, have gone further with statewide pauses of their own, while more than a dozen others have legislation pending geared towards doing the same.
During the moratorium period, the city won’t accept, process, or approve any application for a data center project meeting that size threshold, and no permit or license for one can be issued or take effect while the pause is in place. Smaller commercial-scale data centers under half an acre aren’t affected, since the city noted those are typically necessary for local and regional businesses and don’t carry the same infrastructure demands as their larger counterparts.
The moratorium is set up to renew automatically every September unless the council votes to end it. If and when the city does decide to lift this temporary injunction, the resolution requires a formal public hearing dedicated specifically to that discussion, advertised in a local paper of “general circulation” at least 15 days, but no more than 30 days, before the hearing takes place. That built-in requirement means residents will have a guaranteed opportunity to weigh in before any moratorium is lifted, whenever that discussion happens. It should be noted, City Council Meeting Agendas are always required to follow through with this rule.
For the next year, no large-scale data center project can move through Mattoon’s permitting or zoning process, giving city staff and the council time to study zoning classifications, infrastructure capacity, environmental review protocols, and whatever else would go into regulating this kind of development responsibly, if there is such a way. The resolution notes that Illinois courts have generally upheld this type of temporary land-use moratorium as constitutional, so long as it’s reasonably related to a legitimate public purpose, which city officials say is exactly what this pause is intended to do.
Be sure to tell us what you think! Would you want to see a data center make its way to Mattoon?
Click here to view the agenda from the September 1st – Mattoon City Council Meeting: 09012026
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