Palm Beach County commissioners voted 5-1 to reject Project Tango, a 3.6M-square-foot AI data center near Mar-a-Lago, after residents packed a 12-hour hearing over water, power, and noise concerns.
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A plan to build a massive AI data center about 20 miles from President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago property in Palm Beach, Florida, died Wednesday night after county commissioners voted 5-1 to reject it.
The vote on "Project Tango" capped a 12-hour public hearing where residents packed the room, many wearing green shirts reading "NO to Project Tango." The Palm Beach County Board of County Commissioners sided with opponents who argued the development would strain local water supplies, spike electricity demand, and generate noise near homes and a school.
PBA Holdings Inc., the developer, had sought approval to nearly double a previously approved Loxahatchee project to about 3.6 million square feet, including more than 1 million square feet of data center space. The company revised the proposal ahead of the hearing to address community concerns, a project manager told the board.
Ernie Cox, the project manager for PBA Holdings, estimated the completed development would generate $561 million in annual property tax revenue. That figure did not sway the commission.
Opposition organizers on the NoToProjectTango.com website said the site sat within 1,200 feet of Saddle View Elementary School and the existing Arden community. "Not only is this AI Data Center a threat to the health, well-being, and safety of the hardworking, tax-paying residents of Palm Beach County and their families and children, it becomes a more extreme problem" because of the proximity, the group wrote.
Cox told a local NBC affiliate after the vote that the rejection does not affect existing approvals on the project, which records show include two 100,000-square-foot data center buildings. "Well, that project goes forward. This vote doesn't have any effect on that," he said.
The commission's decision leaves the door open for PBA Holdings to revise the proposal and resubmit it.
The fight over Project Tango reflects a broader backlash against the AI data center construction boom. Data Center Watch, a research project, tracked at least 75 data center proposals worth an estimated $130 billion that were delayed or blocked during the first three months of 2026 due to local opposition.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed an executive order earlier this week imposing the nation's first statewide moratorium on large-scale data centers. Trump, in a Truth Social post Wednesday, called data centers "tremendous WINS for the States and Communities that are lucky enough to get them" and said New York should change its policy "IMMEDIATELY." He described data centers as "Money Machines."
PBA Holdings' stock page is PBA.
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