Note — self-funded — Hillsboro, Oregon
Eight things are still undecided in Hillsboro’s data center code
First reading is Monday, September 15. Second reading October 6. The provisions below were bracketed, changed between drafts, or left silent as of the Planning Commission’s September 9 deliberation. Each one changes what a parcel can hold.
What this is, and what it is not. This is a timeline and a decision structure, not a reading of the ordinance. Calyx has not yet read Draft Order No. 8502 or Staff Reports No. 3 and No. 4 directly. Everything below is drawn from the City’s own published materials and from a detailed public account by a local source that holds a stated position on the ordinance. Specific code language and section numbers are deliberately omitted here until they are verified against the order itself.
If you have a decision in front of you, read the primary documents. They are public: Hillsboro Planning Commission meeting materials on the City’s CivicWeb portal, Case File CDCA-004-26.
Where it stands
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 2026-07-27 | 120-day moratorium enacted on new data center and battery storage submittals, 12:21 pm |
| 2026-08-26 | Planning Commission public hearing. Hearing closed; additional options requested from staff |
| 2026-09-09 | Deliberation resumed on revised draft. Outcome not yet reviewed here |
| 2026-09-15 | City Council first reading |
| 2026-10-06 | City Council second reading |
| ~2026-11-24 | Moratorium expires. Extendable up to six months |
The eight open questions
1. Does administrative approval survive?
The current path for a data center in most Hillsboro industrial zones is an administrative land use decision with public notice and a right of appeal. The draft would move it to a public hearing before a board, with appeal to Council, and would apply that to conversions of existing industrial buildings as well as new construction.
This is the largest single change in the ordinance. It converts an over-the-counter approval into a contested proceeding.
2. Which school buffer distance?
Two distances are bracketed for the Commission to choose between. The difference is a factor of two, measured property line to property line. The staff report contains a map showing the geographic effect of each.
3. Gross acreage or net developable acreage?
Accessory capacity in the draft is calculated against gross site acreage, which includes floodplain, wetland, wetland buffer, steep slope, and lands in the natural resources overlay.
On a forty-acre parcel with fifteen acres of protected wetland and floodplain, twenty-five buildable acres remain. An allowance calculated on gross acreage would permit an accessory facility occupying roughly forty percent of the usable land. Unbuildable acreage generates developable entitlement.
A proposed amendment would define net developable acreage and apply it to every acreage-based allowance in the ordinance.
4. How large can an accessory data center be?
The draft caps accessory data center use at a percentage of gross acreage or a percentage of gross floor area, whichever is less. One published alternative would strike the acreage test and cap it at a much lower percentage of the primary building’s floor area with a hard square-foot ceiling.
On a forty-acre parcel the range between the draft as written and the proposed alternative is roughly 435,000 square feet against 30,000. Same land, same owner, same week.
That is not a drafting detail. It is the difference between a viable accessory facility and a server closet.
5. Was the accessory battery storage ceiling reinstated?
The August draft capped accessory energy storage at a percentage of site acreage with a hard acreage ceiling on top. The revised draft reportedly removed the ceiling, leaving the percentage. Stated rationale: larger campuses may need more.
The interaction that matters is definitional. If accessory energy storage is defined to include installations that export to the grid and participate in utility demand-response programs, then removing the ceiling makes a utility-scale, grid-exporting battery installation reachable as an accessory use without triggering the review that applies to a standalone one.
6. Does off-site capacity transfer survive?
The draft reportedly permits accessory computing capacity to be transferred off-site to an affiliated location within an industrial zone.
Three questions sit inside that. Affiliated location is not defined. An accessory use is ordinarily located on the same parcel as the use it is subordinate to. And a transfer into any industrial zone would reach the zones where the draft prohibits primary data centers.
For anyone holding land in a zone the ordinance would close, this is the only provision in the draft that reaches it. A proposed amendment would strike it entirely.
7. What happens to continuous on-site generation?
The draft would establish that emergency power generation must be used intermittently, as backup during loss of power.
Read against the national picture, that is a consequential sentence. Interconnection queues of three to seven years have made on-site generation the standard bridge, and at least one hyperscale project has been designed to run primary power from on-site engines specifically to avoid entering a queue.
This would be the first instance we have recorded of a jurisdiction foreclosing that structure through land use rather than through air permitting. Other cities will copy whatever survives here.
8. What about generation the code does not mention?
Oregon’s Energy Facility Siting Council automatically regulates thermal power plants at and above a stated megawatt threshold. A modular or microreactor installation below that threshold falls to local land use review instead.
The draft reportedly does not define or address nuclear generation at all. Where a code is silent, an applicant can seek an administrative interpretation that an unlisted use is permitted as an accessory utility.
This is not a Hillsboro peculiarity. Most municipal codes in the country are silent on sub-threshold nuclear generation, and the threshold structure that creates the gap has analogues in other states.
Why we published this
No party to this ordinance benefits from the decision structure being hard to see. A developer holding entitled land, a council member preparing for first reading, a resident who read one account and wants to know what is actually being voted on — all three need the same list.
Calyx takes no position on any of the eight. We have not read the order. When we do, we will say what it says.
Funding. Self-funded. No client, no engagement, no party to this matter. Published under the disclosure policy. If you believe this note is wrong, write to corrections@calyxos.ai — corrections publish at the same prominence as the original.
No individual is named. No claim is characterized as false or misleading. No person’s conduct, motive or state of mind is characterized. Procedural assertions made by third parties are recorded as assertions and are not adopted here.