The City of North Port, Florida launched a "Data Center Info" web resource as its commission weighs whether to pause new data-centre development. ABC7's report is timestamped 29 August at 13:09:53 UTC.
What the city disclosed
A site and development plan application — not a rezoning — was received on 20 July 2026 from an applicant called North Port 300, for land north of Interstate 75 and south of Yorkshire Street. Staff have completed an initial review and are waiting for the applicant to answer identified deficiencies. The buildings would total roughly 896,000 square feet, including about 123,200 square feet of office. A voluntary master concept plan covers about 282 acres, split into roughly 62 acres of commercial near I-75, 107 acres of residential and 112 acres of retail, offices, storage and the data centre.
The two numbers that are missing
Square footage is not the unit of contention in a data-centre dispute. Megawatts and water are — and neither appears anywhere in what the city published. That is a striking omission for a transparency page released four days before a workshop at which Florida Power & Light and the Peace River Manasota Regional Water Supply Authority are both scheduled to speak. Floor area tells residents how big the buildings are; it tells them nothing about load or consumption.
A moratorium that is not yet a moratorium
The commission takes up the first reading of a proposed moratorium ordinance on 31 August, with a workshop on 3 September and a second-reading vote to follow. A first reading is not a law and does not stop anything. Coverage that describes North Port as having paused data-centre development is describing a step that has not happened.
Zoning that predates the debate by 24 years
The property has been designated Activity Center 6 in the city's Comprehensive Plan since 2002, an "employment epicenter" permitting commercial, industrial, warehouse, office, recreation and multifamily uses. That matters because the application landed six weeks before the moratorium reaches its first reading, under zoning set a generation earlier. Whatever the commission passes will have to contend with an application already in the pipeline and a land designation nobody adopted with hyperscale compute in mind.