Google Cedar Rapids data center, Cedar Rapids, Iowa

Google's data center at Cedar Rapids, in Linn County, Iowa, is going up in the Big Cedar Industrial Center on the city's southwest side, on Alliant Energy land near the Eastern Iowa Airport. The city council voted unanimously on June 11, 2024 to extend a 30 inch water main to the site and relocate a road there, before Google had publicly confirmed the project. The site is a 1,000 acre Alliant Energy parcel, the state's first certified mega site, and Google will pay $350,000 a building each year under a community betterment agreement.

The airport is the complication. By June 2026 the city council was set to approve a separate agreement with Google covering the data center's possible effects on the Eastern Iowa Airport, after concerns that heat and steam plumes from the facility could interfere with landings and takeoffs. The deal would also let Google take a temporary certificate of occupancy for one building while those effects are studied.

The county has since slowed things down. Linn County adopted a data center ordinance in February 2026, requiring large projects to complete a water study, sign a water use agreement with tracking and reporting, and sign an economic development agreement. In June 2026 the county's supervisors went further, passing an 18 month moratorium on new projects by a 2 to 1 vote, running to January 1, 2028. Google had approached county officials before those rules existed, then turned to Palo, a city of 1,600, asking to annex 545 acres from the county for a separate hyperscale data center; Palo passed its own data center ordinance on July 20, 2026, by a 4 to 1 vote.