News · 2026-08-05

Nashville voted 27-5 to take a data-center site by eminent domain

Nashville's Metro Council voted 27-5 in the early hours of Wednesday, August 5, on third and final reading, to authorize acquiring a 23-acre South Nashville property by eminent domain if negotiation fails. The site sits next to the Nashville Zoo, and developer DC Blox bought it for 23 million dollars in July with permits already in hand for a single-story data center projected to cost more than 700 million dollars. The city's stated reason is a shortage of office space. Almost nobody involved is treating that as the whole story.

Key facts

• The vote was 27-5 on final reading, in the early hours of August 5, 2026, on Bill ID 8124386.
• The property is 23 acres bought by DC Blox for 23 million dollars in July; the city's own prior assessment values it near 37.4 million dollars.
• A Zoo-organized petition against the project collected more than 500,000 signatures, backed publicly by Brad Paisley, Sheryl Crow, and Jack White.
• Primary sources: the Nashville Banner's account of the vote and CoStar's report.

Eminent domain is the government's power to force a sale of private property for public use, at a price a court will set if the owner disagrees. It is a serious instrument, normally reserved for highways, schools, and utility corridors. Using it to stop a data center is new, and the mechanism is worth understanding precisely because of how indirect it is. The council did not vote to ban the project. It voted to want the land.

What passed, exactly

The measure authorizes city attorneys to begin acquisition. It does not complete a taking. An amendment from council member Quin Evans Segall added a mandatory three-week negotiation window before any condemnation can be filed. If DC Blox refuses to sell, the matter goes to court, where valuation is contested. The city has already assessed the land at roughly 14 million dollars above what DC Blox paid, which is unusual and suggests the fight will be about price rather than principle. Funding comes from the general fund through an existing capital allocation. DC Blox told CoStar on Wednesday it had "no updates to share."

The official rationale, from council sponsor Rollin Horton and Mayor Freddie O'Connell's administration, is that South Nashville needs office space because a nearby city office building is closing. That may well be true. It is also true that in late July the same council voted to impose new data-center zoning restrictions and a moratorium on new data-center permits through December 1, and that the Zoo organized a petition citing noise, light, and power-grid harm to its animals that collected more than half a million signatures with high-profile Nashville musicians attached. CoStar's headline states the plain reading: Nashville is using eminent domain to block a data center.

Why the pattern matters more than the parcel

This is one of several state and local actions landing the same week, and they are at genuinely different legal stages, which is worth not flattening. Nashville's vote passed and is concrete but is years from an actual transfer. In Oregon, four sitting Democratic legislators announced on August 3 that they will propose a three-year moratorium on new large data centers when the 2027 session convenes in January, which is an announcement of intent, not a filed bill. Oregon has already passed a one-year pause on its data-center tax-incentive program, Hillsboro passed a 120-day local moratorium, and Governor Tina Kotek personally blocked a Salem developer from buying state land. Khara Boender of the Data Center Coalition told the Oregon Capital Chronicle that a moratorium would "send a signal that Oregon is closed for business."

Meanwhile Virginia's regulator took the least dramatic and most durable action of the three, ordering Dominion Energy to bill data centers directly for their own transmission lines.

By the Oregon Capital Chronicle's count, Oregon would be the sixteenth state to propose a pause in the past year, and only New York's has actually passed, covering new centers drawing 20 megawatts or more. CoStar counts more than 200 US communities and at least 14 states considering restrictions.

The honest caveat

A council authorization is not a taking, and the office-space rationale is not obviously pretextual just because it is convenient. Cities do close buildings and need replacements. But eminent domain challenges frequently turn on whether the stated public use is genuine, and a record that includes a permit moratorium, new zoning restrictions, and a 500,000-signature petition against this specific project is exactly the record a developer's attorney would want. Nashville may have chosen the most legally exposed of the available tools. What it has certainly done is prove the tool is on the table, which is the part other councils will notice, alongside earlier signals like a state senate president losing his seat over a data center.

Primary source, verified: read the paper →

Ground Truth. (2026, August 5). Nashville voted 27-5 to take a data-center site by eminent domain. Ground Truth. https://groundtruth.day/news/nashville-voted-to-seize-the-data-center-site-next-to-its-zoo.html

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  title  = {Nashville voted 27-5 to take a data-center site by eminent domain},
  author = {{Ground Truth}},
  year   = {2026},
  month  = {aug},
  url    = {https://groundtruth.day/news/nashville-voted-to-seize-the-data-center-site-next-to-its-zoo.html}
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Topics: policy · data-centers · local-government · infrastructure · energy