On Friday afternoon, in an auditorium at Jackson State University, the city gathered a panel to ask a question it has not yet answered out loud: does Jackson want a data center? Mayor John Horhn put it plainly at the start, according to Mississippi Today. “What we’re trying to do today is just have a conversation so that we can educate ourselves about what makes sense for us,” he said. “Do we want this in our community? And if so, under what conditions?”

The framing matters, because the city is running short on time to answer it. The forum, hosted by Jackson’s Planning and Development Department, was billed as a public education event and announced just two days before it was held, Mississippi Today reported. About 30 people attended the roughly 90-minute session; WLBT described dozens filling the seats at JSU’s College of Science, Engineering and Technology Auditorium. Attendees were invited to submit written questions, only some of which were taken up from the stage.

The panel was not local government. It was moderated by two Butler Snow attorneys, Tray Hairston and Charity Karanja — Hairston noted that the firm serves as the city’s outside counsel on public finance and other matters and was asked to run the discussion, according to Mississippi Today. The panelists included Bean Path founder Nashlie Sephus, Clinton Ward 6 Alderman James Lott, and Natasha Parker of the Georgia Institute of Technology’s real estate and development office, who appeared on screen. The session covered what artificial intelligence and data centers are, how many jobs they might bring, and how a community can extract the most benefit. The city said it would summarize the questions and publish answers online.

At the center of all this is a specific proposal. New Jersey-based Saxum Investment Company is asking Jackson to rezone 230 acres in northwest Jackson from mostly residential and commercial use to heavy industrial use, Mississippi Today reported. The company quietly expanded the request from 190 acres to 230, according to the Mississippi Free Press. Most of the land is undeveloped — trees and brush near the Presidential Hills and Ashley Acres neighborhoods — but a two-acre family farm, WurmWorks, sits in the middle of it.

The opposition has been loud. At a packed Planning Board meeting on May 27, residents pushed back hard on both the project and the process. “Even if we wanted a data center here … this process has not been transparent,” said Matt Casteel, whose farm is inside the proposed footprint, in remarks reported by Mississippi Today. One 19-year-old resident, Vada Vero, shouted from the crowd, “You drink the same water we do,” according to the Mississippi Free Press. In a city that has spent years living through a water system on the edge of collapse, the worry about a facility’s water and power demands lands differently than it might elsewhere.

The developer’s case is built on numbers. Saxum’s attorney, Robert Ireland of Watkins & Eager, told the May 27 meeting that a center the size of one proposed for Clinton could bring roughly $60 million to the city and more than $80 million to the school district over ten years, Mississippi Today reported. Ireland also warned there is a “finite window” for the project — the kind of clock that tends to favor a developer over a deliberating council.

The council tried to slow that clock and stumbled. In May, Ward 4 Council Member Brian Grizzell proposed a six-month ban on data-center construction and permitting. “This is a six-month cooling period to give us time to put our heads together, figure this out, to work with zoning, work with planning,” Grizzell said, according to Mississippi Today. The council debated the moratorium but voted to table it after the city attorney warned that such a ban could amount to a zoning change — one requiring a public hearing with 15 days’ notice, and one that, done improperly, could create a due-process problem. A few days later, Saxum postponed its own rezoning hearing.

None of this is happening in isolation. Mississippi has gone from two announced data-center projects at the start of 2025 to seven in the works, Mississippi Today reported, part of a national construction boom that has repeatedly pitted these facilities against the neighborhoods around them over electricity, water, and noise. Amazon and other operators have been expanding in central Mississippi, and developers have floated far larger campuses in the metro area.

Angela Brown, the city’s Planning and Development director, framed Friday’s forum as a chance to surface those worries rather than dismiss them. She acknowledged that early data centers brought noise and other problems, said the technology had advanced, and added that residents have a right to have their concerns heard and addressed through the process, in comments to WLBT.

But the education is arriving late in the calendar. The Planning Board is set to take the rezoning application back up at its June 24 meeting, according to WLBT — two days after a June 22 public hearing before the City Council. That leaves a narrow stretch between a forum the city announced on 48 hours’ notice and the votes that will actually decide whether 230 acres of northwest Jackson become heavy industrial land.

Horhn asked the right question on Friday: not just whether Jackson wants a data center, but under what conditions. The trouble is that the answer is due in less than two weeks, and the city has spent the run-up educating itself rather than setting the terms. Whether the council writes those conditions before the vote — or after the bulldozers — is the whole story now.