A temporary moratorium bars the acceptance, review, processing, or approval of rezoning applications, conditional-use permits, development permits, site plans, building permits, and other development approvals for the construction, expansion, or operation of covered data centers in unincorporated Marion County. The temporary moratorium lasts up to 12 months, or until related new regulations take effect, whichever comes first.

The moratorium applies only to facilities meeting the ordinance’s data-center definition, including facilities used for large-scale data storage, processing, or distribution and associated infrastructure such as generators, cooling systems, water facilities, and substations. Facilities with an anticipated monthly peak load below 50 megawatts are exempt.

Internal-use data centers, server rooms, and information-technology facilities operated by businesses, government agencies, educational institutions, health-care providers, or nonprofits are exempt when primarily supporting the owner’s or operator’s internal operations.

Facilities primarily serving a single organization’s internal enterprise IT, cloud, disaster-recovery, backup, or routine business-computing needs are exempt when they are not primarily serving unaffiliated third parties.

Incidental or ancillary artificial-intelligence applications are exempt when they support the owner’s or operator’s operations and are not offered as commercial AI-computing services to third parties.

Communications and telecommunications facilities with an anticipated monthly peak load below 50 megawatts are not classified as data centers and are exempt, provided they are not designed, constructed, or operated for large-scale computational processing, AI model training or inference, cloud computing, or commercial data-storage services.

The moratorium becomes effective only after the ordinance is filed with the Florida Secretary of State and the County receives official acknowledgment of the filing, creating a procedural delay before the restrictions take effect.

Data centers, server rooms, computer rooms, and information-technology facilities used by a business, government agency, educational institution, healthcare provider, or nonprofit for its own internal information systems, cybersecurity, communications, business applications, or data storage are exempt from the moratorium.

Facilities used primarily for a single organization’s internal enterprise IT infrastructure, dedicated cloud services, disaster recovery, backup operations, or routine business computing are exempt, provided they are not primarily serving unaffiliated third parties.

Incidental or ancillary artificial-intelligence applications supporting the owner’s or operator’s own operations are exempt when they are not offered as commercial AI computing services to third parties.

A data center facility with an anticipated monthly peak load below 50 megawatts is exempt from the moratorium, with peak load calculated as the highest average load over a 15-minute interval.

Facilities whose primary purpose is communications or telecommunications services, such as wireline, wireless, broadband, fiber-optic, internet, or network interconnection services, are not classified as data centers and are not subject to the moratorium if their anticipated monthly peak load is below 50 megawatts and they are not designed, constructed, or operated for large-scale computational processing, AI model training or inference, cloud computing, or commercial data storage.

The moratorium applies only within unincorporated Marion County, so data-center projects in incorporated municipalities are outside this ordinance’s restrictions.