Northpoint Rezone Advances After Salt Lake City Council Blocks Data Centers

A Salt Lake City proposal to rezone nearly 10 acres of west-side land for light industrial use is moving forward — but only after the City Council voted unanimously in a straw poll to make sure no data center ever gets built there. The properties in question, at 2075 W. 2670 North, 2025 W. 2670 North, and 2620 N. 2200 West, sit just west of Interstate 215 in the Northpoint area, where agricultural fields are increasingly giving way to warehouses and industrial parks.

The developer, Lone Peak Lofts, is asking the city to shift all three parcels — roughly 9.64 acres combined — from agricultural (AG-2) zoning to Northpoint Light Industrial, known as M-1A, according to Building Salt Lake. Dustin Kuttler, who represents Lone Peak Lofts, told the council his company has no intention of building a data center on the site, but he accepted contingencies barring the use anyway. The council did not vote on the rezone itself Tuesday, but its straw poll signals it could add a formal stipulation prohibiting data centers before final action.

That caution isn't happening in a vacuum. Data centers are a permitted use in the M-1A zone, and any that did get built would still have to meet city water consumption guidelines and use a closed-loop cooling system. Utah currently hosts 48 operational data center facilities with more than 900 megawatts of capacity, and high-profile operations like the NSA's Utah Data Center have drawn more than 23.5 million gallons of water in a single month from the Great Salt Lake Basin, according to Wyoming Public Media. State lawmakers have taken notice too — Governor Spencer Cox signed House Bill 76, the Data Center Water Transparency Amendments, in March, requiring large data center developments to report their water use to the Utah Division of Water Rights once the law took effect in July.

A Site Boxed In By Gas Lines and Neighbors

The site itself comes with physical constraints that limit what can actually be built there. Two large gas lines run underneath the property, and the report describes three possible building envelopes as a result. Lone Peak Lofts hopes to sell two of those envelopes and build on the third itself, ultimately planning to sell half of the development while retaining the rest.

The company builds small industrial buildings, which the report notes typically range from 30,000 to 50,000 square feet, though the planned structure here would be smaller — somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 square feet, divided into 3,000- to 4,000-square-foot units aimed at local contractors. There are no definite development plans beyond that framework yet. The surrounding area is a mix of agricultural land, low-density residential uses, and industrial warehouses to the west of 2200 West.

Neighbors Push Back on an Access Road

Part of the plan calls for demolishing a single-family home at 2620 N. 2200 West, which Lone Peak Lofts purchased, to make way for an access road serving the rezoned parcels. Written objections submitted to the Salt Lake City Planning Commission in April argued that tearing down the house would push industrial traffic deeper into a residential transitional area, characterizing the move as an access workaround rather than sound land-use planning. Neighbors also raised concerns about noise, visual impacts, and industrial uses creeping along West 2670 North.

The Planning Commission voted in April to forward a negative recommendation on the rezone to the City Council. In response, Lone Peak Lofts agreed to additional concessions aligned with what nearby families wanted: trees and stone wall fencing along property lines, plus a promise to keep storage yards and parking areas away from adjacent homes. Councilmember Victoria Petro, who represents the Northpoint area, said the developer was highly responsive to nearby residents. District 1 Councilmember Aaron Barlow said the central sticking point for the council was the possibility of a data center being permitted in the district under M-1A zoning.

Part of a Bigger Northpoint Buildout

This rezone request is unfolding against the backdrop of years of planning changes in the roughly 1,500-acre Northpoint area east of Salt Lake City International Airport. The City Council adopted the Northpoint Small Area Plan in November 2023 to manage warehouse expansion pressure and set aside transitional buffer zones between residential neighborhoods and heavier industrial corridors. The council then created the M-1A zoning district itself in January 2025 specifically to accommodate light industrial, office, and research uses while protecting nearby agricultural and residential land.

In June 2025, the council annexed more than 1,300 acres of unincorporated Salt Lake County land along 2200 West into city boundaries, bringing Northpoint fully under municipal planning authority. The city has also been extending a main sewer line along 2200 West, and city ordinance requires properties within 300 feet of that new infrastructure to connect to it — a shift for parcels that historically relied on septic systems.

Not every industrial pitch in the area has gone smoothly. In January, the Planning Commission voted unanimously against an 80-acre M-1A rezone request nearby at 2669 W. 3300 North, filed by the Clark & Christine Ivory Foundation, citing conflicts with the master plan and proximity to Great Salt Lake wetlands, as reported by KSL. Meanwhile, industrial growth elsewhere in Northpoint has moved quickly: OCC Industrial broke ground last July on the 175,000-square-foot Northpoint Commerce Center on 12 acres, next to the 95.7-acre Northpoint Innovation Park, after securing M-1 rezone approval in 2024.

For the Lone Peak Lofts proposal, developers say they are not seeking any uses beyond what the M-1A zone already allows, and the current plan offers additional screening and mitigation beyond baseline M-1A requirements. The City Council is scheduled to hear public comments on the rezone on September 22 and could vote as early as October 6.