Mysterious data center inquiry appears near Mount Shasta

In idyllic Mount Shasta, residents are in an uproar over the prospect of a data center coming to town.

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Locals in the rural California town became uneasy after learning during a city council meeting two Mondays ago that Kim Fowler, Mount Shasta’s planning director, received a call from someone interested in building a data center at a former Crystal Geyser water bottling facility. The phone call came to light when City Manager Todd Juhasz casually mentioned that an unidentified caller was interested in buying the facility.

When residents got wind of the prospect of a data center coming to their 3,000-person city, it led to a flurry of Facebook posts, an online petition that garnered over 15,000 signatures, and several threats made against city officials –– all within a week. Locals expressed fears of losing their precious water supply to a data center’s high water needs, and worried the structure would taint the otherwise quaint community that is cherished for its natural landscape.

But city officials insist that the community got way ahead of itself. They have spent the week trying to clear the air: They say there will not be a data center coming to Mount Shasta. 

“Clearly no one is in favor of it. This is very normal. We didn’t think anything of it,” Mount Shasta Mayor Casey Glaubman told SFGATE of the anonymous inquiry into the vacant site. But even after efforts to quell their fears, the community remains in distress.

The anonymous caller was a commercial real estate broker, Glaubman told SFGATE, but he could not elaborate further on who they were, or on whose behalf they were inquiring. Glaubman did say that the inquiry was not related to the Silicon Valley behemoths known to be investing in data centers, such as OpenAI, Anthropic or Meta.

Other city and county officials have also been unable to disclose who the interested buyer is. They claim they do not know when asked. Neither Fowler nor Juhasz, the officials apparently most familiar with the call, responded to SFGATE’s multiple requests for comment.

Tessa Clure, a member of the Mount Shasta City Council, told SFGATE in a phone call that the city often gets inquiries about buying the former bottling plant, which has been empty since 2021, but has yet to find the right fit.

Clure said she thought it was clear at the meeting last week that none of the council members were in favor of a data center coming to Mount Shasta. We “all groaned and moved on” when it was brought up, she said. 

“It’s not going to come to fruition because that’s so out of our scope of what our town needs or wants,” she said, adding that she assumed it would get left alone.

But then one vocal member of the community, Clure said, made a post on Facebook claiming the council was actively deliberating approving a data center.

Clure said that post led to a “domino effect” of misinformation. Residents were suddenly up in arms, claiming that a data center was likely, that the council supported it, and that the members were having secret meetings and financially benefiting from it. 

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“Once that started to become the messaging, we started to receive threats as a group,” Clure said. In addition to a threatening Facebook post Clure received, Glaubman, the mayor, also received threats, he confirmed to SFGATE, including a phone call with a distorted voice on the other end. Juhasz, the city manager, also received threats towards his family, according to Clure.

SFGATE reached out to the Mount Shasta Police Department about Clure and Glaubman’s allegations of threatening behavior but did not hear back in time for publication. However, Chief Robert Gibson in a statement this week denounced the public’s threats and said the talk about a data center was “inaccurate.” 

“What concerns me more, however, is that a number of individuals have responded to this rumor by making threats of violence against council members, city staff, and their families through social media, text messages, and phone calls,” he said. He said the public “absolutely have the right to disagree,” but threats could lead to fines or jail time.

There have been a handful of residents, Glaubman said, who “recognize this is nuts.”

The former Crystal Geyser site is in Siskiyou County; it is not within Mount Shasta city limits. This means if there were a serious proposal to purchase that site, it would be approved or denied by the county board, not the city council. Glaubman told SFGATE that the city has been trying to annex the site into the city limits.

Ed Valenzuela, who sits on the Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors, told SFGATE that “there’s nothing to answer” as it relates to the prospects of a data center at the facility.

“There’s nothing before the board so there’s nothing to consider,” he said. “At this moment in time it’s much ado about nothing.”

He did acknowledge that Siskiyou County could benefit from tax dollars by selling the site.

“We need some property tax values, and with unused property there’s a property tax,” he said, suggesting something should eventually take the place of the bottling facility. But, he insisted, the data center talk is nothing beyond a “rumor mill.”

Valenzuela, Glaubman and Clure all said that they think the space would be best utilized for environmentally friendly purposes. Glaubman lightheartedly said he thinks it should be used for indoor hydroponic farming, or as a recreational facility. Clure said if the space were used for something environmentally conscious, that would be a “win-win.”

The city council is expected to discuss this again during their July 13 meeting.