Project dossier · Fort Meade (Polk County), Florida

Fort Meade Data Center Campus Approved

4.4M sq ft hyperscale campus on former phosphate-mine land, $2.6-2.8B investment; city commissioners approved developer agreement April 14, 2026.

Key facts

Operator
Bohler Places LLC
Size
1,300 ac
Location
Fort Meade (Polk County), Florida
Stage today
Approved

Source

What to do next

Next step: Approved — pivot from stopping it to a binding CBA: enforceable caps on noise, water and cost, plus a community benefit.

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What has happened so far (12 events)

  • 2025-06-10rezoning
    Fort Meade City Commission voted 5-0 to approve land-use and zoning changes on roughly 1,164 acres to permit data center development, paired with a 10-year, $150 million tax incentive package. · source
  • 2026-02-20protest
    About a dozen protesters gathered outside Fort Meade City Hall opposing the proposed Stonebridge/Bohler Places data center project. · source
  • 2026-03-10hearing
    Commissioners reclassified the development agreement from a resolution to an ordinance, requiring 10 days notice, first/second readings, and additional public hearings after Earthjustice raised procedural objections and ~20 residents opposed the project. · source
  • 2026-04-07hearing
    Fort Meade Planning and Zoning Board held a public hearing on the Stonebridge/Bohler Places development agreement. · source
  • 2026-04-08vote
    Fort Meade Planning Commission voted unanimously to recommend the 20-year development agreement with Stonebridge; hearing covered 1.2 GW power needs, 100% backup generator capacity, and revised water-use figure of 50,000 gallons/day via closed-loop cooling. · source
  • 2026-04-14environmental
    Southwest Florida Water Management District adopted a new rule requiring a separate permit approval for the project water use. · source
  • 2026-04-15vote
    Fort Meade City Commission unanimously approved a 20-year, $2.6-2.8 billion development agreement with Bohler Places LLC/Stonebridge for an 8-building, up to 4.4 million sq ft hyperscale data center campus on 1,300 acres of former phosphate mine; 40 of 41 public commenters opposed it. · source
  • 2026-04-16coverage
    Governor DeSantis administration publicly criticized Fort Meade handling of the project, citing concerns about utility rates and water use. · source
  • 2026-04-17report
    Florida Commerce Secretary J. Alex Kelly sent a letter calling the project fundamentally flawed, saying developer water estimates were woefully underestimated and flagging the lack of a disclosed end-user/operator. · source
  • 2026-05-14lawsuit
    Five Fort Meade residents filed two lawsuits seeking to void the city approval, alleging procedural violations, inadequate notice, and incompatibility with the comprehensive plan; trial projected for November 2027. · source
  • 2026-06-01protest
    The Watchdogs of Fort Meade began circulating recall petitions against Mayor Jaret Williams, Vice Mayor Petrina McCutchen, and Commissioner Matthew Taylor over the data center approval. · source
  • 2026-07-17filing
    Recall Committee Chairman Michael Bennett and supporters delivered recall petitions with over 1,000 signatures to Fort Meade City Hall, to be verified by the Polk County Supervisor of Elections. · source

Find the paper trail

Find the paper trail (0 filed · 11 places to look)

State environmental permits

Backup generators, water withdrawal and stormwater are permitted by the state, usually earlier and in more detail than anything filed locally.

County & town filings

The rezoning application, site plan, traffic and noise studies, staff report and every revision.

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.
  • Florida Public Service 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

Other tracked projects in Florida

Cite this page: GridWatch AI, “Fort Meade Data Center Campus”, aigridwatch.com/projects/fort-meade-data-center-fl, 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).

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