City hears Data Center feasibility findings

With all members present, the Lennox City Council met Monday, June 22.

The City of Lennox engaged with Scott and Heidi Sandal and the Lennox High School Digital Age Club to investigate the feasibility of a data center in Lennox. The Sandals, along with several students from the club, were present to discuss their findings. 

“Thank you very much for letting us engage in this study. While data centers are a really, really hot topic right now, you’re finding anybody that has Facebook account and a YouTube becomes the next overnight. But the reality is we studied this. We learned way more about our community, way more about what we have here, not just about a data center, but what else we have our students that we’re missing,” Scott Sandal said. 

Scott and Heidi reviewed both the tangible side, including the feasibility study, as well as the intangible items that Sandal feels the community needs to look into. Nineteen students participated in the Digital Age Club to learn more about data centers. 

“The three things that we found were the feasibility study that we did, the digital age club, which is the discovery of the digital world and what the economy is where we live, and how we can grow it, and infrastructure management technicians,” Sandal said. 

Teegan Musser and Gavin Swier gave a presentation on their project. “We were in charge of the community, and our goal was to answer the question, ‘Does a data center fit for Lennox?’ We looked at the city’s plan, and we found that Lennox is looking to prioritize industrial and commercial growth and with the right-sized data center it can align with that if it’s put away from homes,” said Musser. 

“We found from peer-reviewed sources that data centers don’t actually lower home values, in some instances, it can actually raise it with proper zoning and buffering,” Musser added. 

“We’re not pushing the data center, we’re just bringing you to the starting point of a data center so you have a baseline. The number one most asked question is where do we start this kind of thing and now we have a starting place,” Sandal said. 

Alderman Bill Daugherty asked the team how many data centers were built in 2025. 

“I know the federal government has over 2,000 centers, just because I work with them around the world. But if you look at a map, they said there’s only like 3,000 in the U.S., and the reality is a whole different picture from what people actually know because of security reasons,” Sandal responded. 

The council thanked the Sandals for taking an interest in local students and teaching them about data centers and how they apply to Lennox and the surrounding areas in the near future.

City Administrator, Nate Vander Plaats asked the council to consider the Safe Streets for All Safety Action Plan. 

“The City of Lennox is participating in a larger grant with the Southeastern Council of Governments called Safe Streets for All. The City of Lennox committed to participating in this grant in 2024, with the grant period kicking off in 2025. Following multiple rounds of public comments and surveys, the consultant engineers on the project are prepared to present a Safety Action Plan for your review tonight,” he said, presenting engineer Peyton Weiss from  Felsburg, Holt, & Ullevig Engineering to present the Safety Action Plan. 

“Safe Streets and Roads for All is a federal transportation safety program focused on reducing and ultimately eliminating fatal and severe injury crashed from the roadway network,” he said. 

Weiss and his team are working to answer why a regional action plan is needed for the area. 

“In these rural kinds of communities, it’s more of a question of funding and pooling resources. Lennox, on their own, might have the funding to go out and do a full safety action plan like this, but approaching it as a region helps you pull resources together and develop safety action plans that you might not otherwise be able to afford because they can be expensive,” Weiss continued. 

Other pedestrian-focused safety improvements are included in the plan including crosswalk visibility enhancements, rectangular rapid flashing beacons, bike lanes, sidewalks, and traffic calming measures. The full plan will be voted on at the next council meeting.

Vander Plaats asked the council to consider a tree removal project with the Department of Corrections. 

“The Department of Corrections reached out to the city of Lennox for a collaborative effort. They’ve again trained a chainsaw crew, which they did several years ago, but it kind of fell off to the wayside, but they’ve done it again and that crew is available to help communities in tree removal efforts,” he said. 

“To use this crew locally, we would need to train at least two staff members, transport the crew to and from the worksite, and cross off a couple of additional requirements. This is very much a discussion at this point, but it appears to be a beneficial project to remove some older trees that probably need to be removed soon,” he continued. 

“What’s the financial benefit?” asked President Swier. 

“Let’s call it saving $1,000 a tree for doing ten trees. We have to go through the training, of course and supervise, but we wouldn’t have to pay for a tree contractor necessarily,” Vander Plaats responded. 

“I would support this, but I would recommend that we as a city and a council, do our due diligence in notifying the public that this is coming so that if they are uncomfortable with it, they can avoid that area,” Alderman Lauren VanDriel said. 

The Council asked Vander Plaats to get more information on the program and report back.