Project dossier · Colorado Springs (El Paso County), Colorado

Project Taurus (Raeden) In review

Retrofit of an existing building on Garden of the Gods Road into the city's first AI data center, by California-based Raeden. Administratively approved by city staff in June 2026; the planning commission denied residents' appeals after a marathon hearing; two new appeals now send it to City Council, whose hearing must fall between Aug 29 and Sept 28 (likely mid-September - date not yet set). Chelsea Glen neighbors cite power, water, and noise from a prior Bitcoin operation at the site.

Key facts

Operator: Raeden
Location: Colorado Springs (El Paso County), Colorado
Application filed: 2026-06-01
Stage today: In review

Source
read 2026-08-07

What to do next

Next step: Application filed. Ask the planning office for the hearing date and request formal notice.

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What has happened so far (9 events)

2026-04-01announcement
KKTV reported that Oakland, California-based Raeden proposed 'Project Taurus,' a roughly 50-megawatt data center to replace a former Intel manufacturing plant near Garden of the Gods, and that a neighborhood meeting to hear resident concerns was scheduled for April 7, 2026, at the Hyatt Place hotel. · source
2026-06-01filing
City planning department administratively approved the Project Taurus application in June 2026; neighbors immediately announced an appeal. · source
2026-06-11filing
KRDO reported the city Planning Department administratively approved the Development Plan Modification on June 11, 2026, for the 21.96-acre former Intel site at 1565 High Tech Way, with residents given until 5 p.m. on June 22 to file appeals. · source
2026-06-15coverage
KRDO reported Raeden COO Jason Green said the company made voluntary modifications including generator relocation, enhanced noise monitoring, a $1 million bond, and third-party post-construction audits, while Integrity Matters' Dana Duggan criticized that residents were not notified until a day after the June 11 approval. · source
2026-06-22protest
Per Integrity Matters, a citizen petition requesting a moratorium on data center approvals had gathered 5,349 signatures as of June 22, 2026, and a coalition of 33 appellants led by Katherine Kent and Ron Graham-Becker filed a formal appeal (City File No. DEPN-26-0039) challenging the Project Taurus approval. · source
2026-06-23filing
Five appeals - including one from Chelsea Glen residents and the transparency group Integrity Matters - met the city's requirements to proceed. · source
2026-07-23vote
Planning Commission denied the citizens' appeals after a ~14-hour hearing, upholding the approval 6-2. · source
2026-08-03filing
Two new appeals filed, sending the decision to City Council - the final local authority. Hearing must occur between Aug 29 and Sept 28, 2026. · source
2026-08-11hearing
KRDO reported the Colorado Springs City Council announced its special meeting to hear the Project Taurus appeal would be held September 17, 2026, at 9 a.m. at the Pikes Peak Center for the Performing Arts, with up to 120 speakers allowed two minutes each. · 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.

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 Colorado Springs (El Paso County) 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 Colorado Springs (El Paso County) 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. This project's locality centres on 38.900, -104.850 — 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

Colorado briefing — rates, grid carbon, PUC contacts.

Other tracked projects in Colorado

CoreSite DE3 (Denver) — Globeville-Elyria-Swansea (Denver) Under construction

Cite this page: GridWatch AI, “Project Taurus (Raeden)”, aigridwatch.com/projects/project-taurus-colorado-springs-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).