Sedgwick County Commissioners have extended the pause on data center applications through Dec. 24.
The focus of this pause pertains to the massive, hyper-scale buildings, where the sole purpose of the facility is to house networked computer servers.
A preliminary draft of potential regulations is expected to be released on September 24. If that comes to fruition, it would give the county, the planning board and interested stakeholders a little less than 3 months to discuss the issue further and make any changes deemed necessary.
At the board's December 2 meeting, the commission will check in to see what progress has been made and decide if they can vote on potential regulations by Dec. 16. If not, commissioners could extend the pause into 2027.
The commission also approved the purchase of additional property adjacent to the Douglas Tag office.
The roughly 1-acre parcel is located generally on the south side of the west Wichita facility. It currently contains 85 parking stalls. Originally, this property was being leased by the county but the commission voted to purchase the property outright for $260 thousand.
The funding source for this purchase is the County Treasurer's auto license fund.
