Farmington residents couldn’t get answers about a proposed data center. Then they saw the NDA.

Farmington city officials entered into a non-disclosure agreement with a data center developer more than six months before residents learned of a plan to build a sprawling facility on the outskirts of town, raising questions about transparency surrounding the controversial project.

Five city leaders in October 2023 signed the three-page document, which the Minnesota Star Tribune obtained through a public records request. It bars them from sharing information about the project that Tract, the developer, deems confidential, including discussions related to service requirements and utility capacity.

Tract and the city haven’t named the company that will occupy or manage the dozen planned data center buildings — windowless warehouses that contain hardware that powers computers and phones. That’s frustrated neighbors who want more details about the 2.5-million square foot development proposed just 250 feet from their homes.

“I feel that the NDAs … are the means of how these developers keep the city quiet,” said Nancy Aarestad, who lives one street away from the proposed site. “We don’t know what’s even being kept quiet.”

Farmington Economic Development Director Deanna Kuennen said in an email that it’s “fairly common” for developers to request cities sign NDAs, which allow them to shop different locations and negotiate purchases before publicizing an official project. Farmington officials have signed at least five such agreements since 2018, according to documents the Star Tribune obtained.

Officials in other cities, from nearby Hampton to North Mankato, have also signed NDAs related to potential data centers as the facilities have proliferated in recent years. That concerns advocates for government transparency.

Don Gemberling, a spokesman for the Minnesota Coalition on Government Information, said state statute stipulates all government data is public, unless state or federal law classifies it as protected.

“A non-disclosure agreement is neither a statute nor a federal law,” Gemberling said, meaning government entities “can’t sign an agreement that makes data not public.”

The NDA isn’t the first one tied to a proposed data center that Farmington officials have signed.

A development director in March 2021 signed a non-disclosure agreement with Amber Kestral LLC; a company with the same name was later revealed to be behind a Meta data center in Rosemount. In an email, Kuennen said the agreement was associated with a development called Project Envis, a proposed data center campus encompassing 150 acres that never materialized.

And city officials entered into another NDA in August 2023 with Oppidan, a Twin Cities-based property developer. Kuennen said that agreement concerned a potential large-scale data center in Castle Rock Township that town officials ultimately blocked.

The Farmington officials who signed the NDA with Tract include Kuennen, Planning Manager Tony Wippler, Public Works Director John Powell, Economic Development Coordinator Stephanie Aman and City Administrator Lynn Gorski. Gorski declined to comment, while Wippler, Powell and Aman didn’t respond to interview requests.

The agreement, Kuennen wrote in an email, “was drafted to assure transparency about the proposal” and the city’s compliance with the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act. The NDA allows Tract to seek a protective order in response to requests for confidential information through the state’s public records law. Kuennen said officials haven’t used those terms to prevent or delay the disclosure of public data related to the project.

A Tract marketing official declined to make a company executive available for an interview, citing a pending lawsuit residents filed against Farmington to pause the project.

In a statement, Tract said NDAs are “commonly used when local authorities and businesses explore economic development opportunities.” The company, touting the tax revenue and “hundreds of good jobs” the development could spur, described a hearing that preceded multiple approvals of the project as “full, open, transparent and fair.”

The NDA has become another flashpoint in neighbors’ sustained fight against the project, set to occupy roughly 340 acres in the city’s southeastern corner.

Residents have sounded alarms about the proposal’s proximity to homes and potential strain on groundwater and electricity: Data centers require vast reserves of energy to cool and power servers. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources has noted that under one scenario, the Farmington project could more than double the volume of water the city currently uses.

A smaller group has taken the battle to court, asking a judge to temporarily halt the project over the city’s alleged violation of an annexation agreement. The eight residents suing the city in Dakota County District Court — the city hasn’t responded to the complaint — recently retained a Minneapolis-based attorney.

Farmington officials aren’t the only ones agreeing to keep quiet about proposed data centers, which are rapidly cropping up across southern Minnesota.

In Nicollet County, 85 miles southwest of Minneapolis, a company is studying the construction of a space that could host a data center, North Mankato Community Development Director Mike Fischer said. But Fischer said he couldn’t talk about interest in the site because the city signed a non-disclosure agreement.

And in the city of Hampton, about 10 miles east of Farmington, a consultant city engineer signed a NDA as discussions got underway with an engineering firm about finding a site for a water-intensive development, according to documents and emails a Hampton Township resident shared with the Star Tribune.

That development was later revealed to be a proposed data center.

Mayor John Knetter declined to sign the agreement due to “open meeting rules,” but promised in a February 2024 email to several people discussing the project to “personally keep any information confidential so long as you don’t leave any material at city hall.”

Knetter didn’t respond to interview requests. Cory Bienfang, the consultant city engineer, said he was the only person who signed an NDA, explaining that the agreement allowed him to discuss infrastructure capacity and site selection early on.

But that information is now public, he said, noting the city hasn’t used the non-disclosure agreement to deny data requests. Still, he said he wouldn’t sign a NDA in a similar context in the future.

“My understanding is that as a public official... all records are accessible to the public,” he said.

The NDA Farmington officials signed with Tract bars city leaders from sharing analyses, business plans, presentations and other information from Tract that’s marked as proprietary or “should be understood” to be. The agreement is in effect until October 2026, even if Farmington officials and Tract decide to terminate the agreement. And the developer can seek a court order if the city threatens to or violates the NDA.

Steven Gonzalez Monserrate, who researched the ecological impacts of data centers while earning his PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said he wasn’t surprised to hear about the Farmington NDA.

“This is very typical in my experience of working with data centers, doing studies with them,” said Gonzalez Monserrate, a postdoctoral researcher at Goethe University in Germany. “Sometimes the NDA is to minimize the information the community knows, so that the activists can be slowed down.”

But that’s not always the case, he added. Sometimes, cities and developers come to these agreements to safeguard data centers from security breaches and conceal plans from competitors.

“People are making inroads into these markets, and they want some of this news to be controlled,” he said, adding that an NDA “doesn’t necessarily mean nefarious, evil intention, disrupting or destroying the community.”

Still, residents are continuing to press Farmington officials for more details.

Aarestad said she’s struggled to get information about the project from the city, which initially quoted her $7,000 for copies of documents, including correspondence related to the project. That cost has been reduced to $371, after she sought help from the state’s data practices office, but doesn’t cover everything she wants.

Meanwhile, she brought attention to the NDA at a Dec. 9 meeting of concerned residents. The agreement, she argued before a crowd, is a way to “prevent transparency and public oversight by restricting public awareness, reducing accountability, creating a power imbalance, obscuring plans to rezone and keeping tax incentives or subsidies private.”

Walker Orenstein contributed to this report.