Irongate Data Center (Swervo), Elk River, Minnesota

Elk River Capital LLC and Swervo Development have withdrawn their plan to convert a vacant former injection molding plant at 19178 Industrial Boulevard NW in Elk River, Sherburne County, Minnesota, into a 33-megawatt data center. The Elk River City Council voted unanimously against the zoning change the project needed on July 6, 2026, and the developers pulled the application afterward. The facility would have been run by Swervo-affiliated Irongate Data Centers.

Timothy Jones, whose brewery sits yards from where one version of the plan put its cooling equipment, said a consultant's study found the noise there would exceed 70 decibels, under Minnesota's 80-decibel limit. "I think it would mean either closing this location and moving or closing completely," Jones said. Elk River Municipal Utilities general manager Mark Hanson told the planning commission the project was "a substantial opportunity" for the utility, but the commission recommended against the zoning change and asked for a moratorium.

Residents raised noise, energy use, diesel generator pollution and the closeness of homes and schools to the proposed site. "There are other communities that are investigating this for us. There's a lot to learn, but there's no reason for us to rush into this," resident David McClellan said. Council member Jennifer Wagner said the vote was not a verdict against data centers generally: "Good community planning sometimes means saying yes. It also means sometimes saying no, or not yet, or we just don't have it right yet."

After the vote, the council directed city staff to draft a one-year moratorium on new data center applications, to come back for review at the council's August 3, 2026 meeting; no result of that meeting has been published.