Glendale Advances Project Eagle, a Data Center With Its Own Gas Plant

On September 24, 2026, the City of Glendale Planning Commission held a public hearing on ZON26-05, Project Eagle: a request by Brian Greathouse of Burch & Cracchiolo, representing Baccara Eagle Land, LLC, to rezone about 160 acres from Heavy Industrial (M-2) to Planned Area Development (PAD) for a co-located data center campus and natural gas power generation facility. The site is west of the northwest corner of Litchfield Road and Olive Avenue, in the Yucca District. The staff report describes three phases: the data center campus, the gas power facility and an Arizona Public Service substation. The data center campus is three one-story buildings totaling 1.1 million square feet, and the turbine yard is eighteen 72-foot-tall gas turbines in the southeast corner, brought online as each data center is built. The APS substation, the last phase, is anticipated to be complete in 2030. Staff recommended approval subject to stipulations. The Daily Independent and Bisnow reported that the commission voted 4-2 to recommend the rezoning; the city had not posted minutes when PSV checked, so the vote count is theirs, not a PSV reading of the record.

The parcel is still in unincorporated Maricopa County. A concurrent annexation, AN-273, would bring it into Glendale, and the staff report says the county’s Board of Supervisors approved a Military Compatibility Permit for the same uses in May 2026, and the Glendale City Council approved a Pre-Annexation Development Agreement in April 2026. The annexation’s blank petition went to the City Council’s public hearing on September 22. The city’s published list of upcoming council items, dated September 25, schedules both the AN-273 signed petition and ZON26-05 as voting items on October 27, 2026. Bisnow reported that the developer is Michigan-based Takanock LLC; the city’s records name the applicant’s client and owner as Baccara Eagle Land, LLC. No city record PSV read states the campus’s megawatt capacity, a tenant, or a project cost.

The applicant’s PAD narrative, date stamped July 17, 2026, is explicit about how the power works. The gas plant “will run a portion of its generation continuously to supply the data center power until the time at which APS has completed construction of its substation and connection to the transmission system.” After that, it says, the turbines run intermittently for backup power, to send excess power to the grid, or both. That is a developer claim about its operating plan, not a utility commitment, and it is the part of the story that matters most. PSV reported on September 4 that in the APS rate case record, Microsoft’s closing brief put APS’s freeze on new large load commitments at over thirty months. A campus that can energize on its own turbines, years before a substation arrives, is a different product from powered land waiting on a utility, and it is priced, financed and leased differently.

It also changes what the asset is. A data center campus with an on-site gas plant is part real estate and part power generation business: the turbine yard needs an air permit from the Maricopa County Air Quality District, a gas supply by underground pipe, backup fuel in propane and diesel stored underground, and FAA approval for its stacks. Staff’s stipulations say the natural gas “shall be supplied directly by underground piping solely for on-demand power generation,” while the narrative describes continuous generation until 2030. PSV reads “on-demand” as likely meaning the fuel serves only the site’s own generation, but the record does not define it, and a buyer or lender should ask. The site also sits inside Luke Air Force Base’s 80 and 75 LDN noise contours. The staff report says Luke AFB reviewed the proposal and finds the uses consistent if its conditions, in a June 30, 2026 letter, are met; the narrative lists shielding against radar interference and a ban on any steam, dust or plume that could impair pilot visibility.

The artifact is an entitlement and power dependency register for the site, built from the public record before anyone underwrites rent. Inputs: the staff report and its stipulations, the PAD narrative, the Luke AFB letter, the county Military Compatibility Permit and its conditions, the Pre-Annexation Development Agreement, the annexation petition, the county air permit application, and the council agendas. Output: every approval the campus still needs, who grants it and its current status; every stipulation and base condition that binds operations, such as continuous emissions monitoring, turbine setbacks of at least 150 feet, underground fuel storage and the secondary fire access required before the first certificate of occupancy; the date the grid connection is expected and what the site runs on until then; and every dollar obligation still open, including the traffic signal cost share and the impact fee discussion staff flagged because much of the site is equipment rather than buildings. Every line cites its page.

The reviewer is land use counsel with the development or acquisitions lead, and nothing is relied on until counsel confirms the stipulation text against the ordinance the council actually adopts on October 27, because stipulations can change at the dais. An assistant does the volume work well: reading a 47-page PAD narrative and its county appendices, pulling every condition into one list, tracking the council and air permit dates, and comparing the applicant’s narrative against staff’s stipulations for tensions like the continuous versus on-demand wording above. It should not decide whether a turbine yard’s air permit is likely to issue, what the power will cost a tenant, or whether a lease should treat the 2030 substation date as a delivery condition. PSV has not analyzed this project’s economics and promises no outcome.