Seattle data center proposed for downtown arts venue just days before city council votes on a moratorium

As city leaders consider reigning in the industry, plans for a Seattle data center have emerged, sparking much debate.

The proposal would demolish a current arts space at Third Avenue and Virginia Street in downtown Seattle, replacing it with a six-story tech facility. It is set to feature a research lab, commercial space, and a data center. A Bed Bath & Beyond location used to occupy the space before Cannonball Arts, a music and arts venue, took over.

A data center is a physical facility that houses thousands of computers, servers, and data storage drives meant for processing, storing, and distributing digital information.

The announcement came the same week that the Seattle City Council’s Land Use and Sustainability Committee voted unanimously to implement a one-year moratorium on new data centers in the city.

“The whole moratorium is a temporary issue,” Eddie Lin, the committee’s chair, said, according to KIRO 7. “We know at the end of the day that we need to come up with permanent regulations for all of this, permanent definitions.”

One wrinkle in data center development within Seattle is that if all the paperwork and permits for the proposed data center are in place before the moratorium is approved — the Seattle City Council will vote on the moratorium on June 9 — the project can still move forward.

Energy, water use, and pollution of data centers rival those of most countries

According to a United Nations University report obtained by The Associated Press, global data centers used 448 trillion watt-hours of electricity in 2025, more than all but 10 countries of the world. Producing that much energy consumed approximately 1.2 trillion gallons of water.

The extreme demand these facilities require to operate has many Seattle city leaders worried about the environmental impacts data centers could have.

Contributing: KIRO 7

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