DENVER — The city is opening applications this week for a 20-plus-member working group tasked with recommending how — or whether — Denver should regulate data centers going forward. The effort comes as the CoreSite data center in Globeville Elyria-Swansea sits nearly finished, and as some neighbors say the city's response is coming too late.

Globeville-Elyria-Swansea's newest neighbor, the CoreSite data center, is nearly complete as of Wednesday — a fact not lost on the people who live nearby.

"People haven't taken their eyes off this thing, for good or for worse," said Alfonso Espino, a community organizer with the Globeville Elyria-Swansea Coalition. "We're kind of forced to look at it at this point."

But what's now at the center of Denver's data center conversation isn't just the building itself — it's the city's plan to create a "working group": at least 20 people tasked with recommending what happens next when it comes to potential future data centers in Denver.

Denver City Council passed a one-year moratorium on new data center construction back in May, and the working group is the next phase of that effort. Applications open Friday, Aug. 21, and run through Sept. 4, with a final group expected to be announced by the end of October.

The group will include at least seven community members, plus representatives from utilities, unions, industry, nonprofits and neighborhood groups, academia, health care and air quality experts — the kind of range Mayor Mike Johnston said is meant to answer some basic questions.

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Denver city leaders launch data center 'working group' as they weigh future regulations

"Let's bring together a group of experts, residents, community members to say, what would the right design of these be? Do we want them here?" Johnston said. "If so, how many, and where, and what kind, and what kind of neighborhoods?"

It's a goal — and a group — backed by real funding. The city is putting $400,000 from Denver's Climate Protection Fund toward facilitating the process, hiring outside groups Group 14 Engineering and Civic Consulting Collaborative to help run it.

"We think it's worth spending the time and effort to do it right, because we don't want to rush into a solution that the residents don't want," Johnston said.

City council member Paul Kashmann, who represents District 6, said the moratorium exists because Denver simply doesn't have rules written for this kind of facility.

"Right now, we don't have any use-specific regulations of data centers — they're more or less addressed as any other industrial use," Kashmann said. "Their impacts, I think, have a degree of uniqueness."

For District 9 council member Darrell Watson, whose district includes Globeville Elyria-Swansea, the issue is also about where data centers have been allowed to go up in the first place.

"Data centers can be built in industrial areas across the city, which are predominantly communities of color — like Globeville Elyria-Swansea, where CoreSite is being built," Watson said. "We want to make sure that we have regulations in place that govern how, where and when data centers can be built within the City and County of Denver."

Watson said the current zoning code allowed CoreSite to move forward without any requirement for community meetings or city council approval.

"They had a use by right to come in and build without any community meetings, without the need for City Council to approve," Watson said. "That's the first burning concern — how could this have happened? Our focus going forward is to ensure that this cannot happen again."

Watson said the moratorium doesn't affect data centers already built or under construction, including the CoreSite building — it remains subject to existing air quality, energy and water regulations, the same as any other industrial facility. But he said that could change.

"Once those new regulations come into play, that CoreSite building will be held accountable for any of those new regulations as well," Watson said.

Johnston said three issues keep coming up when residents talk to the city about data centers: water use, electricity costs and noise.

"Some of them use a great deal of water — that's tough in a city, and a region, that has a drought currently," Johnston said. "Some of them can use a great deal of electricity and can sometimes affect the prices of people's electricity in the surrounding region. And then the third is noise impact — is this something that can be next door to your home and not be disruptive to you reading at 9 o'clock at night, or to you having a baby sleep in the middle of the afternoon?"

Johnston said the moratorium's scheduled end date, May 21, 2027, doesn't guarantee data centers will be welcomed back into the city on any particular timeline — or at all.

"We could decide to extend the moratorium. We could decide to dramatically restrict the construction of new data centers. We could decide to not build any more data centers at all in the City and County of Denver," Johnston said. "All those are options."

Asked whether actual rules could realistically be in place before 2028, Johnston said he believes so.

"I think it's very possible for us to do that, and I think that this group is going to work hard, on a focused amount of time, with a clear target," Johnston said.

For those who call Globeville Elyria-Swansea home, the working group feels, to some, a little too late.

"I think it's really shameful that it's taking this long for it to get set up," Espino said.

Espino said the coalition submitted a list of recommended names for the working group — people it considers environmental advocates, academics knowledgeable about data centers and utility infrastructure, and community advocates. He said the process for actually choosing who serves has shifted along the way.

"They're going back and forth between hand-selecting committee members and then hand-selecting open applicants to it," Espino said. "Those people that apply are still going to be hand-selected by the mayor's office, by the city councilors, and a couple of other folks. So it's clearly, objectively speaking, a very politicized working group."

Espino said he hopes the group moves quickly once it's seated — and doesn't limit itself only to recommendations about future data centers.

"They could very much start from here and talk about the recommendations to confront this data center," Espino said. "I hope that the people in that working group understand that, and aren't influenced by the politicization of this subject."

Espino said some neighbors are skeptical the process will lead to real change.

"This kind of feels like a dog and pony show — like it's just getting set up to lower the pressure on the conversation, not do anything about the first building, and then come up with a bunch of recommendations that they don't have to take," Espino said.

Still, Espino said the community isn't backing down from the fight.

"I'd like to see them heavily regulated," Espino said of data centers, both existing and new. "We haven't given up hope. We're very much, ferociously, in the belief that if we keep organizing, things are going to change — inevitably, for the better, for the worse. Only time can tell."

Applications to serve on the working group open Aug. 21 and close Sept. 4.

Community members selected to serve must live in Denver. The city expects to announce the final working group by the end of October, with meetings, small neighborhood gatherings and additional community outreach planned through the rest of the year and into 2027.