Baltimore City Council President Zeke Cohen has introduced legislation that would temporarily ban data centers in Baltimore, citing the kind of concerns that already have spawned similar moratoriums across the country.

The proposed one-year pause in data center construction would aid city leaders “seeking to understand the technology, seeking to understand the cost impact, seeking to understand the impact on human health and on our precious environment,” Cohen said at City Hall yesterday.

This would ensure “that we should not be paying for the harm that they do,” he added.

But some residents who share those concerns say the city is already behind other jurisdictions in addressing the issue and want it to start now to follow their lead and enact zoning restrictions in the face of the rapid spread of these mammoth facilities.

“We are in favor of the Council President’s bill. But we also think there need to be many more steps taken right now to protect the public,” Community Law Center (CLC) Executive  Director Amy Petkovsek told The Brew after joining Cohen and others at the news conference.

Petkovsek’s organization has been working since December with Councilwoman Odette Ramos to craft zoning legislation that prohibits data centers in the city except for industrial zones, and requires other conditions to be met before they could be built.

“We do not see the value in ‘studying’ data center zoning for another year,” CLC attorney Christina Schoppert Devereux wrote in an email to Ramos and others.

“We have already studied the issue, conferred with experts, followed the published guidelines of the Southern Environmental Law Center, borrowed language from other Maryland jurisdictions, and we would like our legislation introduced ASAP so that City Council members can see it and discuss it during public hearings,” she said.

“We are prepared to address it immediately. Not wait until corporations take advantage of our communities,” Devereux continued, calling data center zoning “an urgent public health equity issue.”

Some of that urgency stems from the nonprofit’s role as legal support for the alliance of neighbors pushing back against Johns Hopkins University’s controversial Data Science and AI Institute (DSAI).

Hopkins’ Promises

The removal of city-owned street trees for the DSAI project has been a flashpoint for residents who live near the site at Remington Avenue and Wyman Park Drive – spawning months of high-profile “save-the-trees” protests and a petition of opposition signed by about 1,800 people.

Also at play have been community fears that the nearly 10-acre site on the southwest side of campus will someday be used as a data center.

Hopkins has repeatedly denied that, stating that the two four-story buildings will house 500,000-square-feet of space to be used for offices, labs and classrooms.

At a December hearing where the Board of Estimates granted the university permission to make stormwater improvements, close off Wyman Park Drive and cut down trees, Cohen, sitting as chair, made a point of asking Hopkins representatives to reiterate their promise never to turn DSAI into a data center.

• Community takes its case against Johns Hopkins’ DSAI project to City Hall – and loses (12/18/25)

With verbal assurances in hand, Cohen and the board approved the university’s request, leaving some residents yesterday questioning his new vow to protect citizens from the downsides of data centers.

“He says he doesn’t want to ‘sacrifice his neighbors to the altar of data centers’ just as long as they’re not in his neighborhood,” said Hillary Gonzalez of Sacred Parks and Waterways.

Gonzalez’ group is still waiting for Cohen to hold Hopkins to the promises it made verbally at the December meeting – to put those promises in writing – including the no-data-center pledge.

“Strange how they’re dragging their feet,” Gonzalez said.

Cohen demurred yesterday when asked his position on legislation the law center has been circulating proposing specific zoning restrictions be imposed on data centers.

“I really want to start with a one-year pause and moratorium to give our partners in Annapolis, my colleagues, our great advocacy community, some time to really think about what is the best approach for Baltimore,” he said.

Ramos, who was not at yesterday’s press conference, has not responded to a request for comment.

Differing Definitions

In December, Cohen enthused about the Hopkins project’s potential benefits, declaring that “artificial intelligence is going to play a major role in the future, not just of this city, this state, this country but the entire world.”

Yesterday he was stressing the opposite, warning that the large facilities needed to house the infrastructure necessary for AI processing will further raise already soaring electric rates and could inflict environmental and health harms on already historically disinvested Baltimore neighborhoods.

Under Cohen’s bill, a data center is defined as “a facility or a portion of a facility that is used for remote storage, processing, and distribution of data and is capable of using 10 megawatts or more of electricity.”

The legislation that the CLC says it is working on with Ramos has a more specifics.

It defines a data center as “a building or group of buildings used to house computer systems, computer storage equipment, and associated infrastructure to organize, process, store, or disseminate large amounts of data, which may be a co-located or hosting data center where equipment, space, and bandwidth are available to lease to multiple customers, or a data center owned or operated or both by the individual or entity it serves or supports; or that meets the definition in Section 11-239 of the Tax—General Article, Annotated Code of Maryland.

Under the bill, Devereux said, data centers would be allowed only in Office Industrial Campus and Industrial zones, and only after approval by the Board of Municipal and Zoning Appeals (BMZA).

The bill also defines and restricts smaller “accessory data centers,” meaning accessory to another use. These are data centers that do not exceed 1 megawatt of electric power consumption. The measure would allow them only after BMZA approval, and in EC-2 educational zones only.

“We also enumerate comprehensive use standards for any data center in Baltimore city,” Devereux said. “These would include requirements for developers regarding siting, notice, setbacks, design, landscaping, screening, buffering, lighting, noise, vibration, and regulations on generators and fuel storage.”