Commissioners Denied Project Tango. Here Is What the County Records Still Show on File.

All figures in this article come from Palm Beach County zoning records, the county's Project Tango page, county hearing coverage, the South Florida Water Management District and Florida statute. Verified August 10, 2026.

Jump to a section

• What Happened on July 15
• What Was Actually Being Voted On
• What the Existing Approval Contains
• The Other Matters on the County's Project Page
• Two Owners, One Site, One Lawsuit
• The Moratorium, and What It Does Not Cover
• Why the Water Estimates Never Agreed
• The Other Objections on the Record
• Where Things Stand
• Sources

What Happened on July 15

On July 15, 2026, after a hearing that ran more than 12 hours, the Palm Beach County Board of County Commissioners voted 5-1 to deny without prejudice the zoning application known as Project Tango.

The hearing filled the commission chambers and overflow rooms. More than 80 people signed up to speak. Commissioner Maria G. Marino cast the lone dissenting vote, saying that while she was probably not in agreement with the rest of the board, she would take the slings and arrows, and that the county needs this. Mayor Sara Baxter recused herself on the advice of the County Attorney's Office, which advised that her numerous public statements opposing the project created a conflict in what is a quasi-judicial proceeding. CBS12 reported that in Florida, commissioners serving in a quasi-judicial role must avoid the appearance that they have prejudged the case.

The vote followed a July 2 Zoning Commission hearing at which that body voted 7-0 to recommend denial. It also followed a ruling by a Palm Beach County judge denying an emergency request to block commissioners from considering the project at all.

Two words in the motion matter. WPTV reported that the denial without prejudice allows the developer to revise the proposal and submit it again in the future, and WFLX reported that because the denial was without prejudice, the developer can reapply without waiting a year.

What Was Actually Being Voted On

This is the part that shapes everything else, and it is where most of the confusion begins.

Commissioners were not voting on whether a data center could be built at 20125 State Road 80. They were voting on an application to enlarge what the site is allowed to hold.

The property is a 202.67-acre parcel on the north side of Southern Boulevard, west of the L-8 Canal, roughly 3.4 miles west of Seminole Pratt Whitney Road. Its future land use designation is Economic Development Center and its zoning district is Multiple Use Planned Development. The developer's project website describes the site as next to FPL's West County Energy Center, a 3,800-megawatt natural gas-fired power generation facility.

County records show the site's approval history runs back a decade. A rezoning to Multiple Use Planned Development and a land use change to Economic Development Center were adopted in 2016. On January 30, 2025, the Board of County Commissioners adopted two more resolutions adding 64.46 acres of land area and modifying conditions. The master plan approved at that point allows 2,020,000 square feet.

The application decided on July 15, filed as DOA/ZV-2025-01602, asked to raise that ceiling. According to the county's own project page, the Zoning Commission and Board of County Commissioners were hearing a request to generally increase the allowable square footage permissible within the master plan from 2,020,000 square feet to 3,594,564 square feet, along with a Type 2 Variance to reduce required parking for data center use.

The applicant revised the request on April 27, 2026. The revised preliminary master plan showed 2,346,564 square feet of warehouse, 1,032,000 square feet of data and information processing, and 216,000 square feet of minor utility use.

So the vote was about the proposed increase, and the denial rejected that requested increase. It did not erase the site's previously approved 2,020,000-square-foot master plan entitlement.

One distinction matters more than any other in this story, and most coverage has skipped it. A master plan allowance is not the same thing as an approved site plan. The county's project page states that the current approved site plan indicates two data center buildings, Building A at 100,000 square feet and Building B at 100,000 square feet, one warehouse with accessory office in Building C at 1,200,000 square feet, and one office use in Building D at 6,000 square feet, for a total of 1,406,000 square feet.

So the master plan permits up to 2,020,000 square feet. The site plan approved to date covers 1,406,000 square feet, of which 200,000 square feet is data center use. Reaching the full master plan allowance requires a further site plan modification, which is what the administrative application described below proposes.

Project attorney Ernie Cox said as much immediately after the vote, telling WPTV that the project goes forward and that the vote does not have any effect on it. Asked when construction could begin, he said the team was still going through the process and would evaluate the discussion before moving ahead.

What the Existing Approval Contains

The county's page describes the approved master plan as indicating 2,020,000 square feet of warehouse, accessory office and uses permitted in an Economic Development Center MUPD. It does not itself break that total into a warehouse figure and a data center figure.

WFLX reported after the vote that the site was zoned for 206,000 square feet of data center space and 1,814,000 square feet of warehouse space, which together account for the 2,020,000 total. That 206,000 figure is the one most coverage cited after the vote.

The number also appears in the May 21 pre-application record, but there it sits inside a question submitted by the applicant asking about the maximum square footage of 206,000 for data center. County staff did not answer by confirming that figure as the approved allocation. Staff answered that the master plan must be amended to reflect the correct use allocations.

Meanwhile the county's own description of the currently approved site plan lists 200,000 square feet of data center use, in the two 100,000-square-foot buildings, alongside a separate 6,000-square-foot office building.

A reader encountering several different numbers is not misreading. There are genuinely several, and they describe different things:

The competing square footage figures in the Project Tango record. A master plan allowance, an approved site plan, a pending application and a pre-application inquiry are four different things.

The Other Matters on the County's Project Page

The county's Project Tango page, as posted, lists four separate matters tied to this property. One was the public hearing application that commissioners denied. The other three are administrative or preliminary, decided by the Development Review Officer or answered by zoning staff rather than by elected commissioners.

One of those three, DRO-2025-01675, proposed modifying the site plan to add square footage and buildings on the way to a 3,594,564-square-foot total. The county's own summary states that this application is dependent and contingent upon a decision by the Board of County Commissioners on the application that was denied.

The remaining two are the ones that were not contingent on that vote.

A note on the source: the county's project page was accessed for this article on August 10, 2026. Its hearing status fields still listed the July hearings as pending, so the application descriptions below are the county's descriptions of what was filed, not a statement of where each application stands today.

DRO-2026-00966

This application, filed by PBA Holdings, proposes to reconfigure the approved site plan and add square footage, moving it from the currently approved 1,406,000 square feet up to the full 2,020,000 square feet the master plan allows. County records describe the preliminary site plan as five buildings:

The county's description lists each building's components but does not publish a combined data center figure. Adding the data center portions the county lists for Buildings 2, 3 and 4 gives 698,000 square feet of data center use, inside buildings totaling 752,000 square feet once the accessory office in each is included.

That larger number matches outside reporting. Stet News reported before the July hearing that the applicant had filed for administrative approvals covering 752,000 square feet of data center space, up from an initial guarantee of 206,000 square feet.

The county's description of this application states that the total proposed is 2,020,000 square feet, consistent with the currently approved master plan.

PAR-2026-00811

This one is a pre-application review, and it comes from the other property owner.

WPB Logistics Owner, LLC asked county staff to confirm the approval process for removing Building C, the 1,200,000 square feet of warehouse, and replacing it with four data center buildings of 289,250 square feet each, totaling 1,157,000 square feet. Combined with the two already-approved data center buildings totaling 200,000 square feet, that would bring the site to 1,357,000 square feet of data and information processing use.

The request also contemplates 26,000 square feet of accessory office inside the data center buildings, a 3,000-square-foot security building and guard house, and a 20,000-square-foot water treatment building.

Zoning staff responded on May 21, 2026. Their answer is worth reading closely, because it sets limits as well as a path. Staff said the site plan modification is subject to a modification of the previous development order through the administrative full development review application due to the changes of use; that a second request would be required for the modification of uses and square footages as depicted on the master plan; and that a third request would be required to abandon the previous warehouse use.

Asked directly whether the master plan would need amending to reflect an increase to the maximum 206,000 square feet for data center, and whether that could be done administratively, staff answered that the master plan for the overall MUPD must be amended to reflect the correct use allocations and ensure consistency with previous approvals, and that a modification to adequate public facilities would require a new reservation rather than an equivalency.

Staff also noted that there was an application in process to modify the master plan requiring approval by the Board of County Commissioners, scheduled for July, and that this request may be affected by any decision made by the board. That was the application denied on July 15.

A pre-application review response is not an approval. The document states it is intended to provide a dialogue between the prospective applicant and zoning staff to confirm the appropriate approval process, and that it is valid for six months. The response is dated May 21, 2026.

CBS12 reported in June, before the vote, that court records and county documents showed a TPA-affiliated entity had explored replacing the 1.2 million-square-foot warehouse with four data center buildings totaling roughly 1.16 million square feet, bringing total data center space on that portion of the site to approximately 1.36 million square feet.

Two Owners, One Site, One Lawsuit

The property is not controlled by a single party, and that is central to understanding why more than one plan exists.

County records list the property owners as PBA Holdings, Inc., Central Park Commerce Center Master Association, Inc., and WPB Logistics Owner, LLC.

The application denied in July was submitted by PBA Holdings alone. According to The Real Deal, plans were originally filed in November 2025 by PBA Holdings and WPB Logistics Owner LLC, and those entities have since fallen into litigation. The publication reported that PBA Holdings is a joint venture involving Palm Beach Aggregates LLC, Tennessee-based Phillips Inc., Michael S. Klein of Seattle and New York-based Ogden Cap Properties LLC, and that PBA Holdings owns about 130 acres of the roughly 200-acre parcel.

At the December 2025 Zoning Commission hearing, an attorney representing WPB Logistics Owner and the Central Park Commerce Center Master Association requested that the application be tabled, stating that her client did not consent to the request and would be affected by the proposed changes.

The pre-application review for 1,357,000 square feet of data center was filed by WPB Logistics Owner, LLC. The administrative site plan application was filed by PBA Holdings.

The Moratorium, and What It Does Not Cover

Running alongside all of this is a separate county effort to rewrite the rules.

The South Florida Business Journal, as reported by The Real Deal, reported that on July 7, 2026 commissioners voted 6-1 to direct county staff to prepare a moratorium ordinance on all new data center applications, and 5-2 to approve a zoning in progress on new applications, which blocks developers from filing under the county's current zoning rules while new ones are drafted. The zoning in progress is not the moratorium itself; the formal moratorium ordinance was still to come. Both motions were brought forward by Mayor Baxter. County attorneys said the pause could last up to a year if approved.

On July 14, one day before the Project Tango vote, commissioners voted 7-0 to advertise a proposed ordinance creating a formal definition for large-scale data centers and beginning the public hearing process. CBS12 reported that this vote did not enact a moratorium and would not affect Project Tango.

County staff documents describe the direction as a one-year moratorium on zoning applications for large-scale data centers that are large load customers per the definition in Section 366.043(2), Florida Statutes. The proposed moratorium would apply to new data centers expected to use 50 megawatts of electricity or more.

On August 6, 2026, the county Zoning Commission unanimously recommended the one-year moratorium, while warning that the proposed definition needs work because it leaves too many loopholes for developers. County officials said applications submitted before July 7 will continue moving through the review process, while new applications meeting the moratorium's definition will not be accepted during the pause.

The proposed regulations go to a public hearing on August 27, with final consideration by the Board of County Commissioners expected in September. During the moratorium, county officials plan to draft regulations addressing noise, water consumption, electrical demand, land use compatibility and where future facilities can be located.

The county has not published a statement on whether the administrative matters described above fall inside or outside the moratorium as proposed. The application numbers indicate they were assigned in 2026, and the pre-application response is dated May 21, 2026, but the county's project page does not list a filing date for each, and the proposed moratorium text addresses zoning applications for large-scale data centers meeting the megawatt threshold rather than administrative site plan review. That question is one for county zoning staff.

Why the Water Estimates Never Agreed

Water was repeatedly identified as a deciding factor, and the figures presented never converged.

Project manager Ernie Cox told CBS12 during a site tour that daily water need would be 5,000 gallons per day, describing a closed loop system that does not use water once full. County staff projected 100,000 gallons of potable water per day.

At the hearing itself, the applicant's engineer said the data and information processing portion would use about 1,696 gallons per day, mostly for employee use including restrooms, sinks and kitchen areas. Commissioners questioned why the warehouse portion would then use about 50,000 gallons per day. Commissioner Maria Sachs asked how many people were in there and what they were doing. The engineer said he did not know how many people would work in the warehouse because that information came from the contract purchaser.

The applicant also said the closed-loop system would require a one-time fill of more than 600,000 gallons.

Frederick Bloetscher, a civil, environmental and geomatics engineering professor at Florida Atlantic University, told WLRN that the frequently cited 100,000-gallon estimate could significantly understate likely demand, and put typical use for a hyperscale AI data center at roughly 1 million to 5 million gallons per day.

Two further facts sat in the background. Inside Climate News reported that as of July 10 the South Florida Water Management District said it had not received any consumptive use or environmental resource permit applications for Project Tango. Florida's new data center law, effective July 1, 2026, requires a hearing before a consumptive use permit may be approved for a qualifying large-scale data center, a category state law defines using a 50-megawatt anticipated monthly peak load threshold. Inside Climate News reported that Project Tango would far exceed that threshold, and that because no application had been filed, no such hearing had occurred.

The same reporting noted that the plans included a 20,000-square-foot on-site water treatment building, and that the county's December staff report stated the cooling method had not been determined.

Sachs said afterward that the data center representatives did not know the exact numbers and that there were not enough guardrails to hold them accountable for local water use.

The Other Objections on the Record

Proximity. The data centers were initially proposed about 800 feet from the nearest Arden homes and about 1,500 feet from Saddle View Elementary School. Cox said during an April 8 webinar that the site plan had been updated to relocate the data centers at least 2,000 feet from both. County staff proposed an 850-foot setback from the eastern property line to produce a total buffer of 1,750 feet.

Conditions. WLRN reported that county planning staff said that without an extensive list of customized conditions of approval drafted to mitigate the facility's impact, they would have been forced to recommend denial outright. Commissioner Marci Woodward questioned why the proposal required such an unprecedented list of customized restrictions, saying the county was trying to make it fit, that the current zoning code is not that, and that they were going to create that but it is not that.

The 2016 approval had none. During the hearing, Commissioner Joel Flores asked whether the 2016 approval had included any conditions of approval. Zoning Director Wendy Hernandez confirmed that it had not. Flores also said he did not think the project was compatible with the current uses.

Expert comparison. Sachs said no expert on the Project Tango team was able to compare the proposal to the roughly 120 data centers that already exist in Florida, and that this mattered in her decision.

Scale. News reports have described the broader proposal as roughly 4 million square feet of building space, about 600 megawatts of power and an estimated $2 billion investment. The April 2026 preliminary master plan filed with the county listed 3,594,564 square feet. Cox said the project would create about 1,700 construction jobs and 600 permanent jobs.

Environment. The Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge told county planners in a December letter that the area is one of the primary sources of freshwater flow from north to south through the refuge, a 145,000-acre stretch of Everglades habitat.

Where Things Stand

The denied application, DOA/ZV-2025-01602, is denied without prejudice and can be revised and resubmitted.

The site retains its approved master plan allowing up to 2,020,000 square feet. WFLX reported that allocation as 1,814,000 square feet of warehouse and 206,000 square feet of data center. The county's project page separately describes the currently approved site plan as 1,406,000 square feet, including 200,000 square feet of data center use in two buildings.

An administrative site plan application described by the county as totaling 2,020,000 square feet, with building components that sum to 698,000 square feet of data center use, is listed on the county's project page. A pre-application response addressing a separate concept for 1,357,000 square feet of data center use is also posted, dated May 21, 2026 and stated to be valid for six months. In that response, zoning staff stated that the master plan must be amended to reflect the correct use allocations, and that the master plan modification then in process required approval by the Board of County Commissioners.

The proposed one-year moratorium on new large-scale data center applications goes to public hearing on August 27, with final consideration expected in September. County officials said applications submitted before July 7 continue moving through review.

Resident Tatiana Yaques, quoted by WFLX after the vote, pointed to the commission's findings, saying the commissioners had made clear to staff that their findings are that an AI data center does not comply and is not consistent with the comprehensive plan because of the impacts.

Sources

• Palm Beach County Planning, Zoning and Building, Project Tango (Central Park Commerce Center) project page
• Palm Beach County Zoning Division, Pre-Application Review Response, PAR-2026-00811, May 21, 2026
• Palm Beach County ULDC revisions staff report, Large-Scale Data Centers, Zoning Commission, July 28, 2026
• Palm Beach County zoning application staff report, Central Park Commerce Center
• WPTV, "Palm Beach County commissioners reject Project Tango AI data center after more than 12 hours of debate," July 2026
• WFLX, "Palm Beach County commissioners reject Project Tango, but data center development still approved for site," July 16, 2026
• WLRN, "Not compatible: Palm Beach County rejects controversial Project Tango AI data center," July 16, 2026
• WLRN, "Battle over AI data center developments in Palm Beach County is far from over," July 21, 2026
• WLRN, "Water supply concerns remain top hindrance for AI data centers, says FAU expert," July 30, 2026
• CBS12, "Palm Beach County commissioners reject controversial Project Tango AI data center"
• CBS12, "Could another data center move forward at Project Tango site? Lawsuit raises new questions," June 2026
• CBS12, "Commissioners advance data center moratorium plan," July 2026
• CBS12, "Palm Beach County zoning leaders back data center moratorium, weighs tougher regulations," August 6, 2026
• Stet News, "Zoning Board denies Project Tango AI data center," July 3, 2026
• The Real Deal, "Palm Beach County nixes proposed Project Tango data center," July 17, 2026
• The Real Deal, "Palm Beach County Moves to Halt New Data Center Projects," July 9, 2026
• Boca Post, "Palm Beach County Commissioners Advance Moratorium On Large-scale AI Data Centers Ahead Of Project Tango Vote," July 8, 2026
• Inside Climate News, "An AI Data Center at the Edge of the Everglades Heads to a Decisive Vote," July 14, 2026
• Central Park Commerce Center, developer project site

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