Former Oakland Scientific Facility data center, Oakland, California

Behring Companies' plan to put a data center in the former Oakland Scientific Facility at 415 20th St. in downtown Oakland, Alameda County, California, has set off the city's first organized fight over data centers. On September 22, 2026 a City Council committee unanimously approved a 45-day moratorium on new data centers citywide, and the full Oakland City Council takes up the moratorium on October 6.

The four-story, roughly 83,000-square-foot building once housed a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory supercomputing center, and Behring bought it vacant from Hines in December 2025 for $6.8 million. Behring plans to use about 20,000 square feet of it as a data center within a larger AI campus of three neighboring buildings that would also include a 39-story apartment tower above the 19th Street BART station and 20 stories of offices.

The site already supports up to 20 megawatts of computing power because of its past use, according to Behring, which said it was boosting the building's power from 4.5 megawatts for dense AI computing.

Chief executive Colin Behring argues nothing new is proposed: "Nothing has changed, and our proposal at this point is to use the same building doing what it used to do the same way." He says the project would provide up to 2,300 jobs, and the company is hoping the city will let it proceed without a conditional use permit on the strength of the building's past use. The proposal went to city staff in August and has not reached the City Council.

Opponents say a downtown data center could strain the city's grid and water system, bring noise to nearby residents, and create few jobs for the utilities it would use. A No Data Center in Oakland campaign, with much of the organizing led by the Party for Socialism and Liberation, has a petition, canvassers and flyers in downtown bar windows: "This fight is about who decides the future of Oakland: the people, or the ultra wealthy," its website reads.

Councilmember Carroll Fife, who represents downtown, stood beside Behring in August and said the project "is not the large-scale mega-facility that people have expressed, and legitimately so, concerns." On September 11 she introduced the urgency moratorium, which would stop the city from approving land-use agreements or entitlements for data centers anywhere in Oakland for 45 days while it writes rules on energy, water, air and noise pollution, land use and public health. "I've always stood for development without displacement," Fife said at the committee.

Dozens of residents at the committee urged a permanent ban. "Why are we doing a moratorium?" asked Toshia Christal, an Oakland teacher, artist and business owner. "Why are we not just saying no?" Medina Munoz of East Oakland's Sobrante Park, whose daughters have asthma, said: "Before you approve anything, we need you to study what contaminants would be released."

Eric Negomir of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group urged the committee to engage with the industry rather than add barriers, and mayoral candidate Mindy Pechenuk said the city should regulate data centers rather than stop them.

Nearby, Oakley has banned data centers, San Francisco is weighing a similar moratorium, and a much larger data center is under development in Hayward. In the same week, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed bills aimed at keeping data centers from passing electricity costs on to residents and requiring them to report water and electricity use.

Whether Behring's building needs a conditional use permit at all is still a question for the city; Fife said in August that it may not need more approval if its use matches the laboratory's. If the full council adopts the moratorium on October 6, the city could not approve land-use agreements or entitlements for new data centers while it drafts permanent rules, and any extension would need another council vote.