Riverside Committee Recommends Temporary Data Center Pause

The Riverside Land Use Committee Monday unanimously voted to direct city staff to draft a 90-day moratorium on data center applications to be brought before the Riverside City Council for discussion at a future meeting. 

The temporary pause, if approved, would give the city time to research and put together a presentation on potential data center regulations — including a possible ban — for the Land Use Committee to review in the coming months. 

“The full city council, yet, is not debating if we should have data centers in Riverside or not,” said Councilmember Philip Falcone, who brought the topic forward at the September 14 committee meeting. “It’s more so just put a pause on this for now while these other committees and certain processes occur.” 

The council will review the proposed pause at a future meeting, Community and Economic Development Director Miranda Evans said in an email to The Riverside Record, but the exact date has not yet been set.

The committee’s decision to move forward with a moratorium comes a month after a proposed agreement between the city of Riverside and a nonprofit organization was removed from the council’s agenda over the mention of a data center. 

The agreement originally said the nonprofit Institute for Veterans and Emerging Technology Skills (iVETS), and its for-profit counterpart StemWorx, would “contemplate” the development of a data center after establishing itself in the city.

Alan Stanly, the CEO for both organizations, previously told the city’s Economic Development Committee that the idea was to create a data center meant for community use — which would have been contained within a typical office server room — to help with training residents on emerging technologies. Stanly did not immediately respond to The Record’s request for comment. 

Falcone, in a phone call with The Record last month, said he reached out to the city manager to pull the original agreement off the agenda. Since then, the agreement was amended to remove any references to data centers and was approved by the majority of the council.

Falcone, at the September 14 meeting, said the agreement had pushed him to bring the discussion about data centers to the committee, but noted he had been slowly working on developing potential regulations for several months.

For Falcone, the reasons to ban data centers in Riverside included preserving the city’s limited commercial land for industries he believed could bring more jobs, preventing an electrical grid overload and protecting the city’s water supply. 

A 2025 Riverside Commercial Real Estate report found the city had about 38 million square feet of industrial space with a vacancy rate below 3%.

The city of Perris, when its city council voted unanimously to move forward with a citywide ban on data centers, found that data centers would create about 50-100 jobs compared to thousands of workers a similarly-sized warehouse could create. However, it was noted that the jobs created by data centers tended to be higher paying.

“I’m of course no supporter of warehousing, but even warehousing provides additional more jobs than a data center would,” Falcone said during the committee meeting. “They’re lower quality jobs, but a data center really has virtually no economic impact in relation to jobs that it produces.” 

Perris city staff also found that large-scale data centers could require up to a million gallons of water per day and up to 100MW of electricity. For comparison, according to Perris’ staff report, the average house uses between 150 to 200 gallons of water per day, and about 1MW of electricity could power between 750 to 1,000 homes. 

Riverside Public Utilities (RPU) General Manager David Garcia, in a call with The Record last week, said the city’s water supply was 100% independent from the state and that the utility was able to meet the city’s demands. However, Garcia added, that water is ultimately finite due to a range of circumstances, including the need to share that supply with other municipalities. 

The city’s electrical output, on the other hand, is much more strained. 

Garcia and his team explained that the city recently saw its output reach almost 650MW. The city, they added, can typically generate about 230MW of electricity, and the municipality’s sole connection to the state’s grid provides another 560MW. RPU Assistant General Manager Daniel Honeyfield said a second connection to the grid would add another 560MW to the city’s electrical capacity. Work on the Riverside Transmission Reliability Project to create that second connection is already underway.

“Until we have a second connection to the statewide power grid, I think data centers would have to be a non-starter in the city,” Councilmember Sean Mill said during the September 14 meeting. “We really need to make sure we get that second connection built.”

Falcone added that the city’s struggle to meet the electrical demands was one of his top concerns when it came to data centers. 

Councilmember Clarissa Cervantes, during the September 14 meeting, said she shared many of the same concerns as the other two council members. She added that it was necessary for city staff to return with clear definitions and specific language to ensure developers cannot find loopholes in a potential ban. 

“When we look at our strategic goals in terms of sustainability, I don’t believe this is on par with what we’re wanting to do as a city in terms of smart growth innovation,” Cervantes said. “There’s still many other types of jobs and other types of businesses that we can attract here that can really create the jobs that people are asking of us.” 

The committee instructed city staff to return with more information about a potential ban in the coming months. From there, the Land Use Committee would vote on pushing forward recommendations that would be reviewed by the city’s Planning Commission before being brought to the Riverside City Council.