The backlash against data centers in California has been growing. The facilities have been outright banned in Monterey Park and the city of Coachella, while several towns have issued temporary moratoriums as officials evaluate their stances. Meanwhile, public sentiment is souring, with 73% opposing the construction of data centers in their communities, according to a recent Public Policy Institute of California survey.

Even just a year ago, large swaths of Californians probably hadn’t even heard of data centers and, if they had, they likely didn’t know much about them. The movement against these facilities, whether or not it’s been seeded by Chinese bots, is reaching a fever pitch, as residents attend local community meetings in droves to urge area representatives to think twice about these projects.

But at an Aug. 26 Southern California Fair & Events board meeting in Perris, no one showed up to oppose a potential data center on its premises. The public comment period was silent. So, the venue’s board of directors, a group of people chosen by the governor, went ahead and signed a nonbinding agreement to allow Global Stack, the company pitching the project, to further study the feasibility of a small data center on the state-owned land. 

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Drone view of a 49.5-MW data center under construction in Vernon, Calif., on Tuesday, July 14, 2026. 

Southern California Fairgrounds CEO Russell Vandenberg said he was surprised no one attended the August meeting to voice opposition, especially since he’d watched videos of other fairground board meetings this summer at which Global Stack proposals were made. As many as 100 people would show up with homemade signs demonizing data centers, and file in to protest — even in the extreme heat of summer. “I was certainly expecting some [protesters], but nobody was here,” Vandenberg told SFGATE by phone Monday.

Global Stack, an infrastructure development company, is proposing what is called an “edge” data center for the fairgrounds in Perris. This is a smaller, localized version of the massive computing facilities that usually cause local uproar. It would be part of a larger complex on a roughly 5-acre parcel — just a small portion of the fairground’s total acreage — that hosts a helipad and at least 500 parking spots. If the company gets its way, these structures would sit within as many as 70 fairgrounds in California, but as protesters and angry residents show up at meetings across the state, it’s looking unlikely, even........

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