City officials dispel rumors of a proposed data center in Milwaukee 

MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) -- The vacant Walmart near 60th and Capitol has sat empty for years. Now, developers want to bring part of the building back into use.

While community organizers and posts on social media claim the City of Milwaukee is opening a data center, online documents show a small, data processing facility is proposed for this abandoned Walmart.

The vacant Walmart near 60th and Capitol has sat empty for years. Now, developers want to bring part of the building back into use.

“I think the biggest concern right now is you don’t really know what they mean,” said Michael Zimmer, the director of the Center of Data Ethics at Marquette University.

Planning documents filed with the Milwaukee City Plan Commission show a proposal to use the 109,00 square feet of the building for a data processing and computer research facility. 

Zimmer says the space is likely to be used to store servers. 

“It’s more likely that it’s just going to be a set of computers not that different than the phone company having buildings with sets of computers that our phones switch and connect properly,” said Zimmer. 

Online, the project has been recast as something much bigger — a large-scale A.I. data center. 

“It certainly is showing the anxiety that people have about the sudden growth over these large data centers,” said Zimmer. 

CBS 58 spoke with the Sherman Park Community Organization who put an emergency notice on social media. 

Organizers say the language in the proposal including the words “data processing/computer services/computer research facility” led them to believe it would be a computer data center. 

“The kinds of processing that their trying to do at those large data centers probably wouldn’t be possible at the size they're describing here,” said Zimmer.

The mayor’s office says the proposed operation would take up about one-fifth of the former Walmart's floor space, and is “not equivalent to the massive, noisy, power-hungry data centers being built in other parts of the country.”

Alderman Mark Chambers, who represents the district where the building sits, wrote in a statement, the facility “is expected to have a small footprint … and require no water from the local supply. “

Chambers went on to write “no matter what is proposed: I will ensure that parameters are in place to prevent noise and air quality impacts on neighbors.”

A City Planning Commission meeting was scheduled to discuss the proposal next Monday but has been delayed by at least a month. 

In a statement, a Department of City Development spokesperson wrote in part, “the current proposal does not call for a large-scale data center. The primary focus of the overall development remains housing and a library, which are the central community benefits. We are seeking additional clarification and details from the applicant.”

Zimmer says the bottom line is this space is far too small to be a full-size data center. 

“It would be surprising for it to turn into something like what we’re seeing in Port Washington or down in Pleasant Prairie,” said Zimmer.