Diode Ventures is proposing a data centre on 620 acres near Locust Grove Rd. and Barker Rd. The area would need to be rezoned from agricultural land to allow for light industrial use.

The land is currently owned by Duane Yamamoto, who came to Idaho during World War II in a forced pilgrimage to live in the Minidoka Japanese Internment Camp. He later served as mayor of Kuna in the 1970s and has farmed the land for several decades. Duane’s wife Judy Yamamoto said the plan to sell their land to Diode Ventures will help fund their retirement as Duane’s health is failing and farming the land is becoming cumbersome.

As part of negotiations and impact mitigation deals, Diode Ventures has signed an agreement to pay $500,000 to the Kuna School District, which Diode representative Hethe Clark said has been earmarked for athletics and technology programs. It also has signed a deal to pay $10 million over 20 years to the Kuna Police Department which Clark said will help fund the cost of a sergeant. The company is working toward a deal with the Kuna Rural Fire District which Clark said will likely be approximately $30 million to go toward funding personnel.

According to Kuna Economic Development Director Morgan Treasure, Diode approached the city about the project, named the Gemstone Technology Park, in the fall of 2023.

The data centre would not need to tap into the city’s water and wastewater systems, according to a report from the city’s public works department. Instead, the data centre will have its own wastewater treatment system and will work off a well for water. Diode Senior Project Development Manager John Handley said as part of the data centre’s water plan, it will use infiltration basins, and whatever is not evaporated will go back into the local aquifer.

The company will have to get approval for its plans for water from the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, have its aquifer recharge plans checked by the Idaho Department of Water Resources, and have its septic system cleared by Central District Health before the city will issue construction permits.

The company will also work with Idaho Power to get an improved substation near the facility to improve utility access for the data centre. The developers have also planned to have a buffer zone of undeveloped land north of the data centre.

Kuna is also home to an under-construction data centre for Meta Platforms, which operates Facebook. The new centre is several miles closer to the main core of Kuna than the Meta project, but still several miles from the town’s centre.

Many neighbours and local business owners testified and wrote letters of support for the plans for the data centre. They said they preferred it to solar projects or housing projects that the land could be used for and appreciated the benefits it would bring to the city with what they said will be limited impacts.

The data centre is estimated to bring 100 permanent jobs, 800 to 1,200 construction jobs, and will be built out in phases over 10 years.

The Kuna Planning and Zoning Commission voted unanimously to recommend approval of the rezone and the related comprehensive plan amendment for the data centre. The project still needs city council approval.

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