Jackson's six-month moratorium on data centers takes effect Thursday, banning the city from accepting, processing, or approving special use permits, conditional use permits, or zoning applications for the facilities at most locations. Two days before that clock started, the City Council voted 5-2 on a resolution urging the administration to explore appropriate locations for data center development anyway. The city is now, at once, closed to data centers and shopping for a place to put one.

The nonbinding resolution was introduced by Ward 3 Councilman Kenneth Stokes, who said the city needs the revenue that hyperscale projects could bring. "We've got swimming pools that are closed. We've got libraries that are closed, community centers that are closed," he said, according to WLBT. "I keep hearing Madison County is going to get $120 million."

Stokes pointed to the property around Hawkins Field, the general aviation airport in his ward, as a candidate. Ward 4 Councilman Brian Grizzell, who voted against the resolution, pushed back, reminding the council that the Northwest Hills Terrace neighborhood sits at the end of one of the runways. "The houses are closer to Hawkins Field than most folks probably believe," he said.

The council approved the moratorium on July 14 by the same 5-2 margin. Because the vote was not unanimous, the ban took 30 days to take effect rather than going into force immediately. The measure was amended from the floor to exempt city-owned property near the Jackson-Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport, a carve-out that matters more than it might appear.

The moratorium was meant to buy the city time to write an ordinance regulating data centers. Jackson's zoning code currently contains no definitions for the developments and no rules governing them. City Attorney Drew Martin told the council this week that a new draft ordinance is not close to ready, and that another public hearing would likely be needed once the city gets through budget hearings.

The pause and the resolution sit on top of a quieter track. Records obtained by WLBT through open records requests show Mayor John Horhn's administration has spent months working with attorneys, lobbyists, and consultants on a strategy to attract data centers, and that it has eyed Lake Hico as a potential site for a data center hub.

A briefing document reviewed by WLBT calls the 654-acre site of the former Rex Brown Steam Electric Station at Lake Hico "Jackson's single best opportunity in 50 years to reverse the structural decline of its tax base." The lake was drained in 2020 and the plant came down in 2022. Today the property holds an Entergy substation, meaning the power infrastructure a hyperscale facility needs is already on site.

The same document projects that a $5 billion to $15 billion hyperscale data center at Lake Hico could generate $9 million to $20 million a year in direct revenue for the city, and a matching $9 million to $20 million a year for Jackson Public Schools. It claims the combined stream would exceed Jackson's $23 million general fund deficit within one to two years of full operation.

That is the arithmetic behind the tension. The city is running a deficit it has not closed, and the Lake Hico prospectus is priced to erase it. But the moratorium now in force bans data centers at most locations, and the resolution that passed Tuesday is nonbinding, a statement of intent rather than a change in law.

The airport exemption and the resolution's airport focus point in the same direction: city-owned land. The administration's own playbook already identified Lake Hico as the best site, and the council has now carved out the airport district while asking where else might work. The question no one on the council has answered is whether the moratorium is a genuine pause or a way to steer the entire conversation toward the one parcel the city controls.

Grizzell, who sits on the board of the Mississippi Municipal League, warned the council not to bank on revenue that has not materialized. "Nobody has yet to show me a payout. We're operating actually right now on a bunch of promises," he said. Mayor Horhn, for his part, said the city should consider a data center "that is safe, that is environmentally sound, and that brings revenue that is much needed."

The moratorium runs 183 days from today. By the time it lifts, the city will have to decide whether it wrote rules that allow the Lake Hico project it has spent months courting, or rules that keep it out.