Colleferro, the plan to attract data centers is underway

A city officially founded in 1935, but with residential settlements linked since the end of the 19th century to the processing of sugar beets for the production of sugar. Colleferro, the scene of productions that range from chemistry to heavy industry up to today and aerospace, looks ahead and bets on innovation. In this municipality south of Rome, an ambitious game is opening, kicked off with the publication of a public notice that has all the flavour of a call to the future: the Municipality intends to collect expressions of interest for the construction of data centers, 4.0 production plants, companies linked to the space economy, biotech hubs and advanced healthcare services. Productive areas, but intelligent. No longer warehouses, but high-tech hubs. Not a project imposed from above, but an open call: to the owners of unused areas, to entrepreneurs, to innovators. To think together of a new growth model. It is urban planning, of course. But also industrial policy. It is urban regeneration, but with an eye on the infrastructures that underpin technological development

"It is a territorial bet, linked to a vision. The initiative - explains Mayor Pierluigi Sanna, who is also Deputy Mayor of the Metropolitan City of Rome Capital - wants to leverage the awareness of changing times and how to decline it in an area that, given its aerospace vocation, can apply to be the emblem of a highly technological development model". At the presentation of the project, the day before yesterday, Marco Gabrielli, Councilor for Productive Activities and Umberto Zeppa, President of the Urban Planning and Territorial Planning Commission were present together with Asstel President Massimo Sarmi, who spoke of data centers as an "essential component" of the national telecommunications infrastructure, with a market that is rapidly expanding but this growth "must be accompanied by structural measures in energy matters".

The development of a data center hub in Colleferro – City of Space 2022 and regional city of Culture 2018 – represents the asset for a development that is at least complementary, if not actually alternative, to the existing area on the outskirts of Milan. As for the technical details of the notice, the invitation is not only addressed to owners of free or degraded or even abandoned areas. Simple project or operational proposals will also be taken into consideration. And the selection of the proposals has been assigned to the City Council which will avail itself of the two council commissions. All in 90 days.