Project Skyway on Ice: Judge Stops Google Data Center Construction in Pine Island

The Daily Dig

A Goodhue County District Court judge issued a temporary restraining order on May 22 halting all construction and pre-construction activity on Project Skyway, a proposed Google data center campus in Pine Island, Minnesota. The order came at the request of the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, which filed suit on October 16, 2025, arguing the environmental review failed to meet state requirements.

Judge Patrick Biren found that MCEA raised sufficient legal questions to justify pausing the work. At the core of the dispute is whether the project should have undergone a more rigorous review process. MCEA argues that the city and developer Ryan Cos. knew early on that a large-scale data center was coming, yet the review described two generic development scenarios and never identified a specific end user or facility type.

Internal documents obtained through a state records request show Ryan Cos. describing the project as being built for a "single client, a U.S. founded and headquartered Fortune 200 Company" as early as February 2025. A non-disclosure agreement between Ryan Cos. and the city had been in place since November 2024. Google was not publicly confirmed as the end user until February 24, 2026.

The court also flagged the city's handling of a records request under the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act. MCEA had requested project documents in October 2025 and the city had not fully complied by the time of the hearing in April 2026. The judge found that if construction moved forward before that request was resolved, MCEA would permanently lose the opportunity to use any additional disclosed records in its legal challenge.

Minneapolis-based Ryan Cos. is serving as both developer and general contractor on the project. The firm estimates delays are tracking toward $5 million or more in costs. Ryan Cos. had sought a $5 million bond from MCEA as security, and the court set it at the $2,000 statutory minimum, citing the city's failure to comply with its records obligations as a contributing factor.

Google announced its investment in the Pine Island campus in February 2026, the same day Xcel Energy confirmed it would provide power to the facility. Neither company has disclosed the total project cost. The proposed campus spans 482 acres and would include at least 100 acres of data center development.

TheJobWalk Thoughts

Ryan Cos. is sitting on $5 million or more in potential delay costs on a project that has not turned a single shovel of dirt. That is a significant number, and it is worth understanding how a job gets to that position before construction even begins. When a firm carries both the developer and GC roles on the same project, the exposure does not stay on one side of the ledger. A legal challenge that stalls the development stalls the construction, and the costs from both land in the same place.

The court record points to a specific sequencing issue. According to documents produced through the state records process, the end user and the nature of the project appear to have been known internally well before the formal environmental review concluded. That review, however, was conducted around two generic development scenarios with no named tenant. Whether that ultimately proves to be a legal violation is still before the court. What it has already done is hand an environmental group enough standing to stop the job. For GCs and developers working on large data center projects, where confidentiality agreements routinely keep end user identities out of the public record until late in the process, this case is a useful reminder that the permitting strategy needs to account for what happens when that information eventually surfaces.