Project Blue in Pima County: The Open Meetings Suit Over a Data Center Tucson Rejected

Project Blue was pitched as a $3.6 billion data center campus in the Tucson area, and it collided with a desert region's sharpest anxieties: water, power, and secrecy. Opponents packed hearings, and in August 2025 the Tucson City Council rejected the project.

That rejection did not end Project Blue. The project's path shifted to Pima County, which controlled land outside the city's reach. The county Board of Supervisors approved selling roughly 300 acres of county land to the project for $20.875 million and approved the rezoning needed to build. A development one elected body had voted down was revived by another, and residents who thought they had won discovered the decision had simply moved to a different room.

Arizona has been living with the data center question longer than most states. In Chandler, years of complaints about the constant hum from a roughly one million square foot CyrusOne campus led to mitigation in 2018 and then, in late 2022, to the nation's first data center noise ordinance, with baseline acoustic studies, a paid noise liaison, and years of required follow-up monitoring. Chandler went on to reject a subsequent data center proposal in 2025. The Tucson region's fight over Project Blue is the next chapter of that same statewide story, except this time the disagreement is not about decibels. It is about who got to see the deal.

In January 2026, project opponents filed suit in Pima County Superior Court against the county and its Planning and Zoning Commission. The complaint rested on Arizona's open meeting law and made two central allegations. First, that the purpose behind the rezoning was never disclosed: the public process moved forward without residents being told what the land was actually for. Second, that negotiations over the county land sale had been conducted in secret over roughly two years, from 2023 to 2025, before surfacing for approval.

The remedy sought in cases like this is structural: if the approvals were the product of an unlawful process, the approvals themselves should fall, forcing the county to redo the decision in public. Opponents were not asking a judge to rule that a data center is bad for Tucson. They were asking the court to rule that the public was entitled to watch the deal being made.

In April 2026, the Pima County Superior Court dismissed the lawsuit. The plaintiffs immediately stated their intent to appeal, which is why this case is tracked as dismissed but not finished: an Arizona appellate court may yet review how the open meeting law applies to the county's handling of the rezoning and the land sale, and an appellate ruling either way would bind every county in the state.

The court fight also has to be read alongside what happened to the ballot box alternative. Opponents gathered referendum signatures to put project approvals to a public vote, and the Town of Marana refused to process them, ending that route. With the city rejection bypassed, the referendum blocked, and the trial court dismissal in hand, the appeal is effectively the last legal lever the opposition holds.

That combination, a project rejected by one government, approved by another, and insulated from a public vote, is why Project Blue has become a national reference point in the debate over how data center deals get made. It sits alongside the Saline Township case in Michigan, where a township that voted no was sued by the developer and settled, as evidence that the formal public process captures only part of how these projects actually advance.

For residents elsewhere, the Pima County fight offers hard-won guidance:

• Map every government with power over the site. A city rejection is not the end if a county, a town, or a state agency can deliver the land, the zoning, or the permits. Know all the doors before celebrating one closed door.
• File public records requests early. The secrecy allegations at the heart of this suit concern negotiations running years before any public vote. Records requests during the rumor stage, not after approval, are how residents build a transparency case that can survive a motion to dismiss.
• Expect the referendum route to be contested. Signature drives against development approvals frequently die on procedural rulings, as Marana's refusal shows. Treat a referendum as one track, never the only track.
• Losses at the trial court are not always the end. The pending appeal here, like the appellate wins in Virginia's Digital Gateway litigation, is a reminder that data center process law is being made right now, court by court, and that an early dismissal does not settle what the law requires of officials the next time.

Process challenges run on short clocks and technical rules, and they are unforgiving of delay. If a data center deal near you is moving through approvals you suspect were negotiated out of public view, our guide to fighting a proposed data center covers the toolbox, and a free case review can connect you with an independent attorney in our network who handles land use and government transparency cases in your state.