San Diego’s Congressional Democrats announced that they’ll introduce legislation to require local support of a controversial data center before it could be built on federal land downtown.
Right now, San Diego definitely does not support such a project.
Voice of San Diego revealed earlier this month that Manchester Financial Group was mulling a 400-megawatt data center on Navy land called NAVWAR. That triggered outrage from the community and the San Diego City Council passed an emergency ban on data centers on Tuesday (though that ban wouldn’t apply to federal land).
During the vote, Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera called on Congress to help the city prevent the data center from coming to town. By Thursday, Reps. Sara Jacobs, Scott Peters, Mike Levin and Juan Vargas announced their bill.
“The key thing for me is that wherever data centers are going, local communities should have a say,” Jacobs said.
The Navy selected Manchester to build the military a new command center building in exchange for permission to redevelop the rest of the 70-acre site. Back in 2024, Manchester pitched plans to build thousands of apartments – possibly for military families or veterans – hotels and retail.
Jacobs, who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, said the bill would only apply to the NAVWAR site.
Congress returns for several weeks before the holidays after the midterms. If the bill doesn’t make it before recess and the new Congress is installed, Jacobs said she’ll attempt to introduce it in the next National Defense Authorization Act. That’s a yearly federal law that sets the budget and policies for the Department of Defense.
President Donald Trump wants more data center development and signed an executive order to build them faster, especially on military land. Jacobs said that may not matter.
“Politics on data centers in general has changed so dramatically that Republicans and Democrats both recognize the need for local support on these projects,” Jacobs said.