Attorneys representing the No Desert Data Center Coalition filed a legal complaint in Pima County Superior Court Wednesday alleging that county staff failed to give adequate public notice of how far along planning for the Project Blue data center was when the county land came up for a rezoning vote.
The complaint, the first step in a lawsuit, was filed on behalf of members of the No Desert Data Center Coalition, which has been fighting a Southern Arizona data center project since the summer. The defendants are named as Pima County and the Pima County Planning and Zoning Commission.
The effort seeks to have the rezoning of the county land needed for the data center declared invalid.
The attorneys representing two individuals on behalf of the coalition are Adriane Hofmeyr of Hofmeyr Law PLLC and a group of lawyers with the Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest.
“When the government makes decisions about how to develop different areas of land or makes a decision about what policy to adopt or reject, they need to do that in the open and allow the public the opportunity to comment,” said Jared Keenan, executive director and chief litigation counsel with the Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest. “When the government hides its true purpose or misleads the public about what they are intending to do, it deprives the public of their right to speak out against or speak in favor.”
The Project Blue data center is one of the largest development projects ever considered by the county and city, and has brought with it months of turmoil and outrage. The project, developed by Beale Infrastructure, first received broad public recognition in the summer of 2025 when county officials voted to approve the rezoning of county land near the Pima County Fairgrounds. Under heavy public pressure, Tucson then rejected a plan to annex the land into city limits.
In the aftermath of the public concern over how information about the project was shared, both Tucson and Pima County updated their non-disclosure agreement policies.
The land sale closed on Dec. 24 and Project Blue is moving ahead on county land.
No Desert Data Center Coalition members who brought the complaint say they didn’t want to move to filing a lawsuit, but saw few other avenues for change.
“It pains me that we have to sue the county. This is not what I wanted,” said organizer Vivek Bharathan. “But starting with the planning and zoning commission, it’s been clear that the county administration has been pushing for Project Blue, and set up the process to do just that.”
The complaint alleges that county officials missed key opportunities where they should have made clear they were moving ahead on a massive, and potentially unpopular, data center project on county land.
Arizona Luminaria has requested comment from the county communications team, the Pima County Planning and Zoning Commission coordinator and members of the Pima County Board of Supervisors.
The timeline laid out in the document begins in 2023 and 2024, when staff were approached by a buyer about building a data center.
The next events, according to the complaint, are as follows:
- County staff got an appraisal for the property around June 21, 2024
- County staff signed a non-disclosure agreement around June 24, 2024
- County staff gave the buyer “a right of exclusivity” for the agreement, however long it was in place, on Sept. 26, 2024
- Staff shared a term sheet including information such as the purchase price and closing conditions with the county board in February 2025
- County staff submitted an application to rezone the property around April 14, 2025
- County staff prepared an agenda for the April 30 Pima County Planning and Zoning Commission. The agenda, as reviewed by Arizona Luminaria, considers one new hearing, for the land that would eventually become the location for the Project Blue data center. The complaint alleges the agenda failed to fully share with the public how far along the county was in considering a data center as a specific use for the land as well as plans for the sale of the land. The staff report says the property could be developed “multiple ways with different approaches.” A data center is mentioned once in the document.
- The legal complaint claims county staff failed to disclose advanced negotiations tied to the data center rezoning ahead of a key vote. In addition, the complaint alleges the agenda included plans for the land that were “phony ‘potential’ plans for the property” with “a mention of a data center in fine print sandwiched between two uncontroversial ‘concepts.”’ In a more detailed plan for the land included in the agenda and reviewed by Arizona Luminaria, a data center is named as one of several possible uses.
- The commission approved the rezoning request at the April 30 meeting
- The Pima County Board of Supervisors upheld the rezoning decision at its June 17 board meeting and approved the sale of the land to Beale Infrastructure through Humphrey’s Peak LLC.
To follow open meetings law, the complaint says, the agenda should have clearly given notice that the county intended to sell the property to be developed as a data center.
“The county did not mention that they were in the advanced stages of negotiating the sale of this land,” Adriane Hofmeyr said.
The complaint requests a judge declare that the actions of county staff in setting the commission agenda violated Arizona open meeting law and make the rezoning currently in place void.
Wednesday’s complaint was filed along with an order to show cause, which is a legal motion to move an issue in front of a judge more quickly than a traditional lawsuit.
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