CoreSite DE3 (Denver) Under construction
170,000 sq ft facility at 5050 N. Race St drawing 65-75MW. Under construction with no required community notice; opposition from the neighborhood was the direct catalyst for Denver's citywide one-year data center moratorium passed in May 2026.
Key facts
- Operator
- CoreSite
- Size
- 75 MW
- Location
- Globeville-Elyria-Swansea (Denver), Colorado
- Stage today
- Under construction
What to do next
Next step: Under construction — pull the approved conditions and permits and hold the builder to them; an expansion or a new building reopens the record.
What has happened so far (16 events)
- 2022-11-10financing
CoreSite purchased the Elyria-Swansea site (former concrete plant, heavy-industrial zoned) at Race Street and E. 49th Avenue for $33.5 million. · source - 2024-08-01filing
Mayor Johnston's Denver Economic Development office brought CoreSite's $9M tax incentive request to City Council, which would have returned half of sales/use taxes on the project. · source - 2024-10-01withdrawal
CoreSite dropped its pursuit of the $9M city tax break after council members raised concerns about water and energy usage; the company proceeded to build DE3 using by-right industrial zoning without further council review. · source - 2025-02-01report
A state-funded community health study found Globeville-Elyria-Swansea residents have significantly higher asthma hospitalization rates than the Denver average, underscoring the neighborhood's existing pollution burden. · source - 2025-07-01permit
Colorado DPHE issued an air quality permit allowing CoreSite to install 14 Kohler diesel backup generators (5,040 hp each) at DE3, capped at 25 hours/year of emergency or testing use. · source - 2025-09-01construction
Construction on CoreSite's DE3 data center building was actively underway in Elyria-Swansea, part of a planned 600,000 sq ft, three-building, 60MW campus at 5050 N. Race St. · source - 2025-10-06construction
CoreSite marked a 'topping out' milestone for the 180,000 sq ft DE3 building, the first purpose-built colocation data center in Denver in two decades. · source - 2025-10-14coverage
Colorado Public Radio reported on whether the AI boom threatens local air quality in north Denver, detailing the CoreSite DE3 project, its generators, and neighborhood pollution concerns. · source - 2026-02-24protest
Hundreds of GES residents attended a town hall on the CoreSite data center; CoreSite itself skipped the meeting citing 'safety concerns,' leaving Councilmember Watson, Xcel Energy, Denver Water and state health officials to face residents' questions. · source - 2026-03-12utility
Colorado Sun reported that Xcel Energy's data-center-driven building boom threatens to shock consumers with higher electric bills, adding pressure for state action. · source - 2026-04-07utility
Xcel Energy released a proposed large-load tariff to charge data centers the full cost of powering their operations (including 15-year contracts) to reduce bill impacts on residential Colorado customers. · source - 2026-04-22public-comment
State air quality regulators pushed for public meetings over CoreSite's diesel generator permit amid community pressure. · source - 2026-05-12filing
Colorado lawmakers killed both major data center bills for the session, leaving regulation to the Colorado PUC and increasing pressure on Denver's local moratorium effort. · source - 2026-05-18moratorium
Denver City Council unanimously passed a one-year moratorium halting new data center zoning permits, after hours of community testimony; several members publicly apologized for not stopping the CoreSite project when they had the chance in October 2024. · source - 2026-05-21moratorium
Denver's one-year data center moratorium took effect, with the city convening a 20+ member working group of officials, utilities, unions, industry, and community advocates to recommend future regulation. · source - 2026-07-21environmental
CoreSite's data center generators/construction were drawing noise complaints from Elyria-Swansea residents as the facility neared completion. · source
Find the paper trail
Find the paper trail (1 filed · 11 places to look)
Permits already on file (1)
Filings we have a source for — the record, not a place to look for one.
- 2025-07-01
Colorado DPHE issued an air quality permit allowing CoreSite to install 14 Kohler diesel backup generators (5,040 hp each) at DE3, capped at 25 hours/year of emergency or testing use. · source
State environmental permits
Backup generators, water withdrawal and stormwater are permitted by the state, usually earlier and in more detail than anything filed locally.
- Colorado CDPHE — Air Pollution Control DivisionThe program page: which permits this state requires, and the office that issues them.
- Search Colorado CDPHE — Air Pollution Control Division for this projectsearchThis state publishes no searchable permit database, so a written records request to the agency is the reliable route. Use this search only to find the right office.
County & town filings
The rezoning application, site plan, traffic and noise studies, staff report and every revision.
- Search Globeville-Elyria-Swansea (Denver) planning filingssearchPlanning departments post application files under many different names. Find the department, then ask the clerk for the application number — that number unlocks everything else.
- Search Globeville-Elyria-Swansea (Denver) property records / GISsearchThe parcel record names the buying LLC and the sale date, which is what ties an anonymous filing to an operator.
Utility & grid records
The electricity request is filed with the grid operator and the utility long before the town hears about it — and states the real load.
- No organised market covers this statenoteThere is no public queue to read. The record is the utility's integrated resource plan and its filings at the PUC — plus FERC eLibrary for anything federally docketed.
- Colorado Public Utilities Commission — docket searchSpecial contracts, large-load tariffs and rate cases are docketed here. Testimony and exhibits are public, and are usually more candid than the press release.
- FERC eLibraryFederal filings: transmission agreements, interconnection service agreements, and co-location disputes.
- Search the serving utility for a will-serve lettersearchThe will-serve or load-service letter is the utility's own written commitment. Ask the utility and the PUC for it by name — it is frequently the first document to exist.
Federal databases
Works anywhere, and covers the operator's record at its other sites.
- EPA ECHO facility searchEvery federally-reported air, water and waste permit at a facility, plus its inspection and violation history. Search by address or draw a radius around the site.
- EPA EnvirofactsThe same underlying records, queryable by county — useful for 'what else is permitted near this site' rather than one facility.
- EPA Facility Registry ServiceResolves the shell LLC on a permit to the facility it belongs to. Worth a look when the filing name means nothing locally.
These are places to look, not evidence that anything has been filed. Links were checked on 2026-08-21; search links are queries, not records. What to ask for.
Around here
- Denver community briefing — Enactedexpires 2027-05-21
- Colorado briefing — rates, grid carbon, PUC contacts.
Other tracked projects in Colorado
- Project Taurus (Raeden) — Colorado Springs (El Paso County) In review
Cite this page: GridWatch AI, “CoreSite DE3 (Denver)”, aigridwatch.com/projects/coresite-de3-denver-co, retrieved 2026-10-11.
As of August 2026 (2m ago) · changes weekly — re-check before citing
A working set of identified proposals a community can track, not a census — most of the country's activity is not in here yet. Pennsylvania is the exception: its rows are synced from PA DEP's own data-center permit tracker, so the state's coverage is close to complete and carries the permit trail with it. **Each row carries its own provenance.** Rows showing a verification date link to reporting or the governing body's own record and were read on that date; rows marked *unverified* have no source on record — a lead to check, not a fact to cite. **Stage is derived, not asserted.** *Hearing scheduled*, *Awaiting decision*, *Approved* and *Withdrawn* are computed from each row's milestone dates on every rebuild, so a hearing date that has passed stops reading 'scheduled'. Hearings get moved and projects re-file under new names — treat a scheduled date as the earliest to act by, and confirm with the clerk before relying on it. Leads are mined into data/project_candidates.json and promoted here only after a human reads a primary source.
Part of the data center project tracker — open data, CC BY 4.0 (JSON · CSV).