Stop the Data Center in Ahwatukee

4801 E. Thistle Landing Phoenix, Arizona 85044

Will Today’s Data Center Require Its Own Power Plant Tomorrow?

The approval of the East Thistle Data Center was presented to the Ahwatukee community as a one-time land use decision — a single project, on a single parcel, replacing a vacant office park. What it actually created is a precedent, an infrastructure anchor, and an invitation.

What gets built on that 40-acre site next is an open question. And the answer being actively explored across the data center industry right now should give Ahwatukee residents serious pause.

The Grid Is Already Breaking

Before getting to what might come next, it’s worth understanding the pressure that’s already building on Arizona’s electrical infrastructure — pressure created directly by the data center industry.

SRP — the utility building the dedicated substation for the East Thistle facility — has publicly stated it is working to more than double its generating capacity in the next ten years to meet rising demand, driven heavily by data centers. APS, Arizona’s largest utility, currently has at least 10 gigawatts of pending data center interconnection requests — more than the utility’s entire peak demand record. In 2025 alone, electricity demand in Arizona grew at four times the national average, driven predominantly by data centers running around the clock.

The grid is straining to keep up. And the industry is already looking for a solution that doesn’t depend on the grid at all.

“Bring Your Own Power”

Data center operators have begun exploring — and in many cases already deploying — dedicated on-site power generation as an alternative to waiting for utility infrastructure to catch up. The driving logic is straightforward: if the grid can’t guarantee reliable, affordable power at the scale hyperscale facilities require, you build your own power source and connect it directly to your facility.

This approach is called “bringing your own power,” and it is rapidly moving from concept to reality across the industry.

The near-term solution that’s already being deployed is on-site natural gas generation — essentially industrial-scale gas turbines or peaker plant configurations built directly on or adjacent to the data center site. APS announced a new 2,000-megawatt natural gas plant specifically to meet data center demand. Across the country, retired gas and even coal plants are being brought back online to feed facilities like East Thistle. The diesel backup generators that data centers already require for emergency use are simply the beginning of a broader pattern of on-site fossil fuel generation.

The Nuclear Option Is Not Science Fiction

More dramatically, and more concretely than most people realize, the industry is pursuing dedicated nuclear power for data centers — including on-site small modular reactors.

Microsoft committed to a 20-year agreement to restart Three Mile Island’s Unit 1 reactor exclusively to power its data centers. Google signed what is believed to be the first corporate agreement in the United States to develop a fleet of small modular reactors, targeting up to 500 megawatts of capacity through a partnership with startup Kairos Power. Amazon invested over $500 million in X-energy, a company developing gas-cooled small modular reactors, and signed a 20-year agreement for 1.9 gigawatts of nuclear power from an existing Pennsylvania plant. Meta issued a request for proposals targeting between one and four gigawatts of new nuclear generation.

In total, major tech companies signed contracts for more than 10 gigawatts of possible new nuclear capacity in the United States in a single year.

Small modular reactors — SMRs — are nuclear reactors designed to generate up to 300 megawatts of power in a smaller, factory-manufactured form factor. Their key design advantage is that they can be deployed near the load they serve rather than in remote locations, connected to the facility by short transmission runs. They are purpose-built for exactly the kind of application that a 257-megawatt hyperscale data center campus represents. One SMR, roughly, would power the East Thistle facility entirely.

Commercial SMR deployment in the United States is still several years away — no SMR is yet operational domestically. But the investments are real, the contracts are signed, and the regulatory processes are underway. The industry is not speculating about this future. It is funding it.

What This Means for This Neighborhood

The East Thistle facility has its own dedicated SRP electrical substation — a 2.5-acre utility-scale installation built for no other purpose than to deliver power to this campus. That infrastructure, once built, defines the site’s energy profile for decades. It also defines what is physically and logistically feasible in the immediate vicinity.

Consider what surrounds this site. Directly to the south along 50th Street sits a commercial office building at 15210 S. 50th Street. To the east, a row of relatively new warehouses lines 50th Street directly adjacent to the data center property. Both are within easy reach of the substation’s electrical interconnection. Both sit in commercial or light industrial zoning. And both, under the right economic pressure, could be acquired, demolished, and redeveloped as power generation infrastructure to serve a 257-megawatt hyperscale campus that is already straining the regional grid.

This is not a prediction. No one is announcing plans to tear down those buildings. But consider how the Thistle Landing office park looked to Menlo in 2015: a mostly vacant, underperforming commercial property sitting next to useful electrical infrastructure, in a zoning category amenable to repositioning. That’s exactly the description that applies to the properties flanking this site today.

A data center campus with a utility-scale substation and a hyperscale tenant demanding dedicated power capacity becomes a very compelling anchor for adjacent energy infrastructure development. The economics that drove Menlo to acquire and hold Thistle Landing for nine years before repositioning it are the same economics that could make the surrounding parcels attractive to an operator or developer needing to solve a power generation problem.

Nobody is announcing a power plant for this corridor. Nobody needs to — because nobody was required to foreclose that possibility when the data center was approved. The approval process addressed what was being built in 2024. It said nothing about what this infrastructure anchor could attract in 2034.

The Approval That Asked No Questions About the Future

When Phoenix City Council approved the East Thistle Data Center as a consent item in March 2024, no one asked what this site might become over the life of the investment. No one asked whether the presence of a utility-scale substation and 40 acres of industrial land use would create pressure or incentive for on-site power generation. No one asked what Menlo’s future tenants might require as conditions of their leases. No one asked what would happen if SRP’s grid became too strained to guarantee reliable delivery and the economics of on-site generation shifted.

Those questions weren’t on the agenda. They weren’t in the stipulations. They weren’t conditions of the approval.

The 1996 zoning that supposedly authorized this facility was written for a one-story office park. It has nothing to say about natural gas turbines or small modular reactors. The 2024 approval that actually built on that zoning was silent on the question of future energy infrastructure intensification. There is no protective framework in place — only a zoning label from 1996 and an approval from 2024, neither of which contemplated a world in which the biggest technology companies on earth are racing to build their own power plants.

Residents of Ahwatukee who would reasonably draw the line at a natural gas peaker plant or a small modular reactor in their neighborhood should understand: the decision that made that future harder to prevent was made in March 2024, presented as a routine consent calendar item, and approved without a word of discussion.