Plans for another controversial AI data centre in Sydney have been scrapped, with a community group hailing the decision as a “victory for people power”.
The facility, which was set to become part of a proposed logistics hub on the Cooks River at Arncliffe in the city’s south, faced backlash from the local community after it was revealed in July last year.
Developers Stockland and John Boyd Properties proposed to redevelop the rezoned 18.3-hectare Kogarah Golf Club site into an estimated $3.5 billion logistics precinct including an AI data centre.
Stop the Cooks River AI Project (SCRAP), which consists of hundreds of members, had been protesting against the development since forming in August.
‘We were worried’
Group organiser Paddy Gibson said surrounding residents were celebrating the “very good win for people power”.
“People really love this river and we’re just horrified to hear that it could be threatened in this way,” he said.
Mr Gibson said it would have posed a risk to the fragile local ecology around the river, which is called Goolay’yari in local Indigenous languages, which was already recovering from “industrialisation over the years”.
“There’s endangered plants and other animal species in the green space,” he said.
“There’s plenty of people trying to work on remediating what is a very polluted river, and we were worried that this would set back those efforts.”
The wider scheme attracted multiple protests due to its scale and the potential disruption from operating the data centre, along with concerns about the impact on the sensitive foreshore along the Cooks River.
It may also have run up against difficulties in securing a power connection amid increasingly tight supply in the Sydney basin.