Could a Data Center be Coming to the Dogpatch?

The Cow Palace Data Center is defeated, but what about this one? The potential for a data center even closer to the heart of the city is a bit more likely, but hasn't caught the attention of progressives (yet) in the way the Cow Palace proposal did. Did you know about it? 

A pie-in-the-sky proposal to transform fairgrounds into data centers was met with fierce resistance in the Bay Area because it included tucking a “small” data center (and helicopter pad) into a Cow Palace redesign. Almost overnight, there was a vocal response, a hard pass, a strong “NO WAY” from neighbors in San Francisco (technically Cow Palace is in Daly City). 

It was easy for the community to latch onto. Cow Palace is a tangible representation of happy memories from the Dickens Fair holiday fetes to livestock shows and circuses. But the Dogpatch Power Station doesn’t have that.

 In fact, many people probably don’t even know what the stack that sticks up in the middle of the Power Station project is. They may not even know there was a decades-long environmental justice fight to clean the neighborhood up and protect the bay, all centered on that stack. And now, the development plans for the project have a Trojan horse: A data center, right here within the city and county lines of San Francisco. And it appears nobody has noticed.

The big smokestack sticking up on the eastern shoreline, visible from the top of any major hill, is trying to be an icon. It’s got its own Instagram and branding. And it could one day be as recognizable as Sutro Tower or the Transamerica Pyramid, other icons that started as an eyesore. But back in the day, the stack symbolized something else: Pollution. 

The Potrero Generating Station was a fossil fuel station right on the edge of a bustling city. It burned natural gas and diesel, providing San Francisco with power for decades. And while it operated, it pumped its wastewater into the Bay, bath temperature and “filtered” of debris. The water jostled around on the shallow floor of our tortured Bay, stirring up other toxins like mercury and PCBs that linger from industrial pollution of yore. Closing it was a big deal for Gavin Newsom, and it wasn’t easy. There were permissions to seek, deeds to undo, promises to make to the community that full cleanup would happen. 

In the context of environmental pollution sins in San Francisco, the stack echoed other pains, like the Navy’s failure to manage the cleanup of Hunters Point, or the radioactivity of Treasure Island. But somehow, with the odds stacked against it, the project got largely positive feedback. The pandemic slowed things down, but as you can see from the new Instagram and the glowing coverage in the Chronicle, even a minor setback like a change in design plans has been met with nods of approval. 

But astute readers will pick up on a little Easter egg within that coverage (removed paywall version here). “Block 5, entitled as a residential building, could become a ‘small data center,’ if that’s what future tenants require,” writes the Chronicle’s Laura Waxmann. And the developer isn’t just asking for that. They’re also requesting that the entire parcel be zoned in advance with permission for PDR (Production, Distribution, Repair). 

You may remember PDR being a hot topic in 2025, when Supervisor Jackie Fielder tooled legislation to protect her district and its workers from potential harm at the hands of tech bros. Or, as GrowSF might opine, legislation to fuck over job creators and innovators.

The developer at the Stack is now called Fifth Space. Their old name was Associate Capital. Their vision for the former power station is actually pretty cool. Imagine all electric, tons of housing including a huge portion of deed-restricted affordable units, park and open nature space, and a full cleanup. Plus a new icon for San Franciscans to turn into stickers and slap on hats, joining Coit Tower and the Golden Gate Bridge as shorthand for the City that Knows How. 

The troubling part is that other than the blip in the Chronicle about a small data center being part of this package, the project isn’t being met with scrutiny. Should it be built? Probably! It brings exactly what the City needs: housing, innovation, nature. But what’s the line we are going to draw as a community? 

This uncomfortable ultimatum will keep coming up in the near future. State Bill 954 includes an exemption from environmental review for projects that have “advanced manufacturing.” Critics say the language of the law means developers could sneak in a gas plant, a modular reactor, or other ways to power itself — all without any of our typical California environmental review processes.

Technologies that are met with literal guillotines at city council meetings in other cities have been met with applause in San Francisco. Things like Flock, hugely unpopular points of rallying and resistance across the liberal spectrum, poll overwhelmingly well here. And maybe this data center proposal is another one of those ways San Francisco is either a step ahead or a step behind the rest of the left – and surely out of rhythm.