CONSULTING SERVICES FOR THE PREPARATION OF A DATA CENTER AND LARGE-LOAD DEVELOPMENT REGULATORY FRAMEWORK

The City of Lakeland, Florida (City) is soliciting proposals from qualified multidisciplinary consulting teams to assist the City in developing a comprehensive regulatory framework governing the zoning, siting, permitting, utility service, and long-term operation of data centers and other large-load developments.

The rapid growth of data centers, artificial intelligence (AI) computing facilities, cloud computing infrastructure, and other energy-intensive industries presents opportunities for economic investment while also creating unique challenges related to compatibility, utility infrastructure, environmental resources, and long-term fiscal sustainability.

Unlike many local governments, the City owns and operates electric, water, wastewater, and stormwater utilities. This unique governance structure allows the City to coordinate land use planning with utility planning and infrastructure investment. It also requires the City to ensure that future development is planned in a manner that protects existing utility customers, preserves system reliability, and allocates infrastructure costs fairly.

The City recently adopted a temporary 12-month moratorium on new data center and large-load development to provide sufficient time to evaluate existing regulations and develop a comprehensive policy framework addressing the unique characteristics of these facilities. The City’s objective is to emerge from the moratorium with a technically sound, legally defensible, and implementable regulatory framework that provides certainty for both the City and future applicants.

The successful Consulting Team will evaluate existing conditions, identify regional and national best practices, assess utility service and municipal infrastructure capacity, develop recommendations for the siting and regulation of future data centers and other large-load development, and prepare implementation documents, including recommended amendments to the City’s Land Development Code, related utility policies, and other implementation documents necessary to establish the recommended regulatory framework.

The final product should provide the City Commission with practical recommendations that can be implemented through future legislative and administrative action.

The purpose of this project is to prepare a comprehensive regulatory framework that enables the City to responsibly evaluate future data centers and other large-load developments in a manner that protects public health, safety, and welfare while:

• Protecting existing utility customers from subsidizing growth-related infrastructure
• Ensuring that development-related costs and financial risks are appropriately assigned to the proposed development
• Maintaining reliable electric, water, wastewater, and stormwater service
• Protecting environmental resources and promoting responsible water and energy use
• Preserving community character and protecting sensitive land uses
• Promoting responsible economic development
• Providing a predictable and transparent regulatory process
• Establishing legally defensible development standards consistent with Florida law

The regulatory framework should establish consistent standards for data centers and other large-load developments regardless of whether a facility is newly constructed, constructed on a greenfield site, or located within an existing or speculative building. Requirements should be based on the anticipated impacts and infrastructure demands of the proposed use and should appropriately address the infrastructure, utility, environmental, public safety, and fiscal implications of both new construction and the reuse or conversion of existing facilities.

The project is intended to produce an integrated regulatory framework, not a comprehensive master plan, for managing future data center and large-load development. The recommendations should balance economic opportunity with infrastructure capacity, environmental stewardship, fiscal responsibility, and long-term community objectives.

Unless otherwise expressly stated, the analyses required under this RFP are intended to establish a planning and policy-level basis for the City's regulatory framework and are not intended to substitute for project-specific engineering, environmental permitting, utility interconnection, or other technical studies that may be required of individual applicants.