Project dossier · Cedar Rapids, Iowa

Google Cedar Rapids In review

Data center by Google in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. In review.

Key facts

Operator
Google
Owner
Google
Tenant
Google DeepMind
Location
Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Stage today
In review

Source
read 2026-08-14

What to do next

Next step: An application is in the record. Ask the planning office for the next hearing date and request formal notice.

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What has happened so far (6 events)

  • 2024-03-21announcement
    Cedar Rapids officials publicly confirmed that Google was the company behind the previously unnamed, proposed ~$576 million, 1,396-acre data center project on the city's southwest side. · source
  • 2025-01-28vote
    The Cedar Rapids City Council approved a development agreement/urban renewal ordinance for Google's data center in the Big Cedar Industrial Center, setting terms including a minimum $576 million investment, construction start within three years, and at least 31 new full-time jobs. · source
  • 2025-05-30announcement
    Google held a celebration event in Cedar Rapids to officially confirm its data center project at Alliant Energy's Big Cedar Industrial Center and announced an additional $7 billion investment in Iowa over the next two years for cloud and AI infrastructure. · source
  • 2025-05-30financing
    Google announced $7 billion in Iowa investment covering the new Cedar Rapids data center and expansion of its existing Council Bluffs facility, plus a workforce-development partnership with the electrical training ALLIANCE aimed at increasing Iowa's electrical workforce pipeline by 95%. · source
  • 2026-06-22coverage
    The Cedar Rapids City Council was set to vote on an indemnification agreement giving Google a temporary certificate of occupancy for the first data center building while impacts were evaluated — the concern centered on heat and steam plumes potentially interfering with landings at the nearby Eastern Iowa Airport. · source
  • 2026-07-23coverage
    Cedar Rapids Mayor Tiffany O'Donnell denied allegations that council members received kickbacks tied to the Google and QTS data center projects; reporting found the city manager and utilities business manager had signed NDAs with Google and QTS early in the projects' development. · source

Find the paper trail

Find the paper trail (0 filed · 12 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.

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. This project's locality centres on 41.930, -91.700 — search that point with a 5-mile radius.
  • 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 Iowa

Cite this page: GridWatch AI, “Google Cedar Rapids”, aigridwatch.com/projects/google-cedar-rapids, 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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