Image via Tulare County Fair Facebook page

The Tulare County Fair board could vote Tuesday on whether to lease fairground land to a California company that wants to build small data centers at fairgrounds across the state.

The July 21 board meeting agenda lists an action item to rent land — two to five acres — at the Tulare fairgrounds to Global Stack LLC. If it follows proposals the company has made in other counties, the lease could run 100 years.

Both the Kings and Tulare county fairs are considering the company’s pitch, which would put data centers at venues better known for cotton candy and rodeos. 

Data, parking, landing

Global Stack is proposing 8- to 10-megawatt, edge-computing data centers combined with parking garages and helicopter landing pads at state fairgrounds. The company wants to build as many as 70 sites statewide by 2030, according to a presentation it has circulated to fair boards.

In the presentation, the company describes the data centers as small. So-called “hyperscale data centers” have a power draw of more than 100 megawatts — enough to power 80,000 U.S. households, according to a Congressional report. 

The company says the plan would amount to a $20 million per-site investment for emergency services and that it would share revenue with the fairgrounds at no cost to taxpayers. It asks fair boards to “reimagine” their fairgrounds.

Opposition brewing

News of the plan has drawn opposition from some residents in both counties, with concerns raised about a data center’s effect on water and pollution in an urban area.

The company had sought to build an 8- to 10-megawatt data center at the shuttered Calistoga fairground. Public backlash led the city’s fairgrounds advisory committee to end discussions with Global Stack. 

No city water

Dena Rizzardo, CEO of both the Kings and Tulare county fairs, was out of town this week and did not respond to requests for details by deadline.

She told KMPH that the facilities would not rely on the city’s water supply.

Daniel Kang, Global Stack co-founder, said the site could include aircraft landing areas and a parking structure design to support disaster response operations.

Different entities would build components of each campus: MeshClusters LLC would construct the data center, DAA Parking LLC the parking and PanGalactica LLC the eVTOL landing network.