Jane Fonda returns to Denver to challenge a giant data center looming over clinic, park, and homes

Jane Fonda's newest trip to north Denver brought wider attention to a neighborhood dispute over a large data center project.

Residents are challenging the facility's permit to operate near Tepeyac Community Health Center, a park, apartments, and a planned senior living site.

Outside the clinic, on a narrow patio, community members and organizers said the development could worsen pollution in an area already living with major industrial impacts.

What happened?

On Thursday, Fonda visited Elyria-Swansea again to hear from residents trying to stop a large CoreSite data center campus from operating less than a block from the clinic, according to Denverite.

Plans for the nearly finished DE3 facility call for 14 diesel generators as backup power, and the building spans 600,000 square feet.

In Elyria-Swansea, a largely Latino neighborhood, the data center is being built amid existing pollution pressures, including Interstate 70 and the Suncor refinery.

Organizers argue that adding the backup generators so close to patients, families, and future seniors heightens those concerns.

Harmony Cummings, an activist with the Green House Connection Center, said recent organizing victories show that "the society that the richest, most unethical tech assholes are trying to push upon us is not inevitable."

The Denver City Council unanimously approved a yearlong pause on proposed data center development in May, temporarily preventing CoreSite from moving ahead with two additional facilities on the same property while the city considers new rules.

Why does it matter?

The debate is not an abstract conversation about tech expansion. It is about air quality, water use, and whether a neighborhood with long-standing environmental health risks will be asked to take on even more.

Robin Reichhardt, a co-founder of the GES Coalition, said, "That means that there needs to be a real conversation about those diesel generators. It is unacceptable to put that much pollution back in one of the most polluted ZIP codes in the country."

The fight also reflects a national tension tied to AI. Data centers power cloud computing and artificial intelligence tools, and those facilities are placing increasing demands on the energy grid.

While AI can help improve forecasting, grid efficiency, and clean energy deployment, the rapid growth of data centers can also drive up electricity demand, strain water supplies used for cooling, and potentially contribute to higher utility bills if expansion outpaces smarter planning.

Gil Herrera, a longtime north Denver resident on supplemental oxygen, summed up the human stakes plainly: "We still got lives in us. We want to see our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren, and not be a part of this destruction."

What's being done?

City leaders say the moratorium is intended to buy time to determine whether Denver can accommodate more data centers without harming nearby communities.

Councilperson Paul Kashmann said, "We're putting together a working group to look at all the issues concerned to see if we can welcome additional data centers to Denver. If we can, what type of regulations would have to be in place to make that happen?"

At the state level, lawmakers are also considering additional safeguards. State Senator Cathy Kipp previously sponsored a proposal to require data centers to run on renewable power, adopt water-saving cooling, and disclose more to nearby communities.

That measure failed in May, but Kipp is already working on a revision.

Fonda ultimately urged regulation rather than resignation, saying, "We will not be able to put AI back in the bottle. AI is here, and it's going to stay here. What we have to do is be sure that it's regulated."

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