Line hundreds deep packs into room for Project Taurus Data Center meeting

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) - The line wrapped around the Hyatt Place off Garden of the Gods Road. The conference room, with a capacity of around 100 people, was filled twice over as the singular Q&A session was split into two.

Even then, many people were turned away from the community meeting about 'Project Taurus,' which seeks to build a new data center for artificial intelligence (AI) in the old Intel Fabrication building off Garden of the Gods Road and Centennial Boulevard.

PREVIOUS COVERAGE: AI data center could come to Colorado Springs

Inside the hotel conference room, a location which the city says was picked for its proximity to the project, tensions ran high.

Several asked questions of Jason Green, Co-Founder of Raeden.

"How many gallons of water will it take to initially charge the closed-loop system?"

"200,000," Green replied.

Others took the meeting as a chance to directly voice their opposition to the proposed data center.

"We have a better idea. That you build it somewhere else!" said one person in the meeting.

"Go to a non-residential area!" said another.

Questions were asked about the noise the center will create, the pollution, and the property values, but the common thread woven in all the questions was why this location, why our neighborhood?

"Data centers don't just live anywhere, and so the reality is that the combination of the existing building, the power infrastructure that's there, and the network that is also there to allow the companies that could install their equipment and operate all of that confluence is what creates service for this region. So that's why that location, if you went and moved this 40 miles outside of town, it doesn't have the same resource." Green replied in the meeting.

Several people who KRDO13 spoke to after the meeting said they did not feel satisfied with the answers they received.

KRDO13 has asked many of those same questions about Project Taurus. You can find answers from the city, Colorado Springs Utilites and Raeden, the developer, here.

A second meeting is being scheduled two to three weeks out at a larger location.

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