en.Wedoany.com Reported - A data center project in Bonner, Missoula County, Montana, USA, has been canceled after the local property owner withdrew support. The project was originally planned by data center developer Krambu for construction at the Bonner Mill Industrial Park.
Located at 9314 Bonner Mill Road, the project was designed to have a total capacity of 29MW upon full completion, with Phase 1 providing 7MW. Krambu planned to house the data center in an Edge prefabricated building owned by the Joint Forest Products Company along Highway 200, which closed last year after only five years of operation.
Mike Heisey of Bonner Property Development, LLC, which owns the building where the proposed data center was to be located, has withdrawn support for the project. Heisey told the county that after listening to public opinion and understanding various concerns, he decided to withdraw his signature from Krambu's special exception application, and Bonner Property will no longer proceed with the data center project. Missoula County included his comments in a notice issued this week, stating that this means the project will not move forward. Krambu has not commented on this news.
Missoula County has been considering a moratorium on data centers while updating zoning regulations to mitigate potential impacts from such developments. County planner Jennie Dixon told the Missoula Current that she was surprised by the decision to withdraw the application and had encouraged them to persevere. The project was first announced last year, and as of press time, a Change.org petition opposing the development had gathered over 48,800 signatures. According to the 2020 census, Missoula County has a total population of approximately 118,000.
Founded in 2017 and headquartered in California, Krambu states that in addition to hosting and cloud services, it offers GPU hardware based on Nvidia and servers from Supermicro, and can provide 250kW rack density through direct-to-chip liquid cooling. On its website, Krambu lists a 10MW, 8,000-square-foot (745 square meters) site in the Newport area of Spokane, Washington, used for company R&D, as well as a 6MW air-cooled site in Oregon. In addition to the abandoned Montana project, the company lists a planned 30MW greenfield project in Pennsylvania, announced last year and being developed in partnership with Paradox Data. Reported future pipeline projects include a 100MW development in Montana, a 299MW project in Ohio, a 400MW project in Illinois, and three projects in Alberta, Canada (18.5MW, 95.7MW, and 200MW).
