Goodman Group, Australia’s largest property firm by market value, is encountering growing resistance to its flagship data centre project in Tsukuba, Japan. The development, slated to become one of the country’s biggest data centre campuses with an eventual capacity of 1 gigawatt and an estimated investment of about 3 trillion yen (≈$20 billion), began construction on a 45‑hectare site in the Oho district earlier this year.
Local concerns surface
The Tsukuba site sits adjacent to a residential block, a hospital and a nursing home, and serves a community of roughly 20,000 people. Residents say they were unaware of the project’s true scale until large cranes appeared in February. Hiroyuki Yanagimachi, who organized a local residents’ group, noted that the project was originally described in 2023 documents as a logistics warehouse, only later being rebranded as a “data centre,” which raised suspicion among neighbours.
Yanagimachi’s group has gathered about 800 signatures calling for an open town‑hall meeting and has sent two letters to Goodman requesting an information session, but has yet to receive a response. If dialogue does not materialise, the group is considering protests at the construction site and outside Goodman’s Tokyo office.
Goodman’s response
Goodman says its door remains open to meet the head of the residents’ association and address concerns, providing contact details for further communication. The company plans to hold an information meeting with residents after consulting municipal authorities.
Six months after construction began, Goodman hosted its first information sessions, which a few dozen Tsukuba residents attended over two evenings in August. The invitation‑only meetings were held at a local restaurant and featured a multi‑course meal. One attendee, identified only as Keiko, described the event as feeling like a hospitality gathering and said it left her feeling distrustful of data centres, even though she is not opposed to them in principle.
Industry context
Goodman’s project is part of a broader wave of foreign‑backed digital infrastructure investments in Japan, with developers such as Singapore’s GLP and London‑based Colt Data Centre Services also seeking locations in densely populated neighbourhoods. Critics argue that large data centres can strain power grids, water supplies and local environments.
The Japan Data Center Council, an industry body that includes Goodman, published guidelines in May urging operators to treat community engagement as a two‑way forum for discussion and mutual understanding, rather than a one‑sided report. Goodman asserts that it has exceeded legal requirements and the standards set out in those guidelines.
As the project moves forward, the balance between meeting Japan’s surging demand for digital capacity and addressing legitimate community concerns will remain a focal point for both Goodman and local residents.
Original reporting: Appleton, WI News Feed (HLL/CB) — read the source article.
