Talks of a data center inevitably make their way to Monterey County.

AI seems to be in the headlines every hour now, moving to the forefront of the national political debate as we enter the heat of midterm elections.

But the fight over AI is also playing out locally. While people may love using AI—users of ChatGPT and Claude continue to grow dramatically month over month—data centers, not so much. With the massive energy and water consumption, noise and pollution, it’s understandably a tough sell.

Katie Rodriguez here, flagging that data centers have creeped into the political chatroom in King City.

As my colleague Royvi Hernandez reports in this week’s issue of the Weekly, Jonas Lalehzadeh, who is currently running unopposed for the District 1 seat on the King City City Council, is marketing a property he acquired back in 2021 as a “power-ready data center campus.”

Initially, Lalehzadeh bought that property with cannabis cultivation in mind. But what followed was a sticky legal battle; Lalehzadeh is now suing King City after the city manager revoked permits for the site. The city also alleges Lalehzadeh had been in violation of state and federal drug laws.

Now, that property that he bought in 2021 for $3.5 million is up for sale with an asking price more than five times what he bought it for.

“The property provides a compelling platform for operators seeking deployable compute capacity in Northern California without the constraints of the Silicon Valley power grid,” according to the listing, as Hernandez reported, also noting 8.31 megawatts of power are already onsite.

You can check out Hernandez’s story here.