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BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WVTM) — The Greater Birmingham Humane Society (GBHS) is reconsidering its plans for a new facility in Birmingham’s Oxmoor Valley neighborhood due to concerns from donors about its proximity to the Nebius data center project.
The organization has already filed a lawsuit against the proposed AI factory, aiming to stop the project from moving forward. Last month, GBHS initiated legal action over the site’s location.
GBHS CEO Allison Black Cornelius said the decision to potentially relocate comes after feedback from some of their largest donors.
“It is only smart of us after hearing back from some of our biggest donors and they’re big ones, to start looking for another location. That’s heartbreaking,” Black Cornelius said.
The organization has spent nearly $10 million on the Oxmoor Valley facility, which has been in development for decades. Cornelius said the AI factory’s construction next door has raised concerns about potential harm to staff and animals.
“Our donors are not comfortable with our staff and our animals being exposed to something that we aren’t sure is going to be harmful. We’re not going to allow our staff and animals to be an experiment and find out ten years from now that they have damages to their hearing or damages to their central nervous system or whatever might happen,” Black Cornelius said.
She added that GBHS would not have chosen the site had they known the AI factory was a possibility.
“There was a master plan in place that the city had approved called the Oxmoor Master Plan Covenant. That covenant assured all these folks who were buying these half-million-dollar homes and up that this area would not return to the type of industrial use it was before,” Cornelius said. “What’s being sold to our community is that a data center is different. Well, an AI factory doesn’t manufacture steel, and it doesn’t manufacture clothing. It manufactures intelligence, but it’s still a factory.”
The decision to potentially relocate comes as GBHS was preparing to break ground on phase two of the project, a teaching hospital dedicated to treating animals. Phase one, which was meant to house animals, is already complete thanks to millions in funding and support from the Jefferson County Commission. However, Cornelius said the building may remain vacant.
“There is no case statement without the county building, so we can’t really move and find a new location and build our buildings without those animals. So the county building, I say this, I’m not afraid to say it, we’d have to rebuild it. I’m not going to expect the county to pay for that or taxpayers to pay for it, but someone’s going to pay for it. If we’re going to try to build this again someplace else, we’ve got to redo it,” Cornelius said.
This is not the first time a data center has disrupted GBHS’s plans. Initially, the organization intended to build in Titusville, but that property is now home to the DC BLOX data center.
While GBHS hopes the lawsuit against the AI factory will allow them to proceed with construction at the Oxmoor Valley site, they are weighing their options as construction on Nebius continues.
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