The City of Industry city council has negotiated plans with developers to convert the Puente Hills Mall into a data center resulting in protests throughout the eastern San Gabriel Valley.

The Puente Hills Mall currently exists as a homage to Back to the Future fans and has not had store or food court openings within the last four years. After holding up since 1974, most of the stores are closed, with the exceptions of the AMC movie theater and Spo-cha, and Round 1.

The original owners were bought out by RCB Equities and Real Estate Development Associates (REDA) in 2024 for $ll5 million with the intention to revive the space.

June 2024 City of Industry Officials, Developers, and Owners began talks of turning the mall into data centers. New owners decided that the property would be worth more if it were used as a data center.

The major issues the surrounding communities have with the data center proposal is the facility uses a lot of electricity and water to cool the machines; they also cause sound pollution, and a significant decrease in air quality. Using a lot of electricity can cause hardship for residents as electricity prices to rise. Some Data centers consume up to 300,000 gallons of water daily, and with larger data centers, even going up to 5 million gallons of water.

Community member, Tracy Moronatty said, “The Data will impact many people’s lives and the world, as it’s already in pollution, this won’t make it any better.”

Protests have broken out across the eastern San Gabriel valley as residents of the surrounding communities are fighting back against the project proposal. A Change.Org petition has been circulated to showcase community outrage against the data center development.

The LAHS community would be heavily affected by the data center, as it would be placed 3.5 miles from the school.

LAHS sophomore, Mario Perez said,”I’ve been posting the protest on my stories to make sure everyone knows what is going on, and hopefully this can slowly stop it.