AirTrunk drops 140MW Lane Cove West data centre as NSW inquiry reports

AirTrunk has told In the Cove it is abandoning a 140-megawatt data centre planned for Mars Road and Apollo Place sites in Lane Cove West. The project went to the NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure on 6 March 2026 and set a maximum building height of 37.4 metres. In the Cove understands the call was made a couple of months ago, though AirTrunk had not informed NSW Planning.

AirTrunk said it had carried out early planning work on a possible Mars Road site, but that the process had lapsed. The company said there would be no environmental impact statement and no community consultation for the site. It also said it had no plans for further development in Lane Cove once Stage 5 is finished.

The existing SYD2 data centre and the approved Apollo Place development are unaffected, and AirTrunk describes Apollo Place as Stage 5 of SYD2. AirTrunk says a pending modification would cut that development's gross floor area by about 24 per cent and rework the layout of supporting equipment and services. The company says the two will become one integrated campus. SYD2, at 1 Sirius Road, is designed to reach more than 180 megawatts across multiple buildings and 24 data halls at full build-out, according to AirTrunk.

Three of the four extra data centre proposals once floated for Lane Cove West Business Park have now been dropped. Goodman pulled its 90MW Project Mars at 12 Mars Road in September 2026, and the Lane Cove DC Alliance confirmed it would not go ahead at 16–20 Mars Road.

The news came in the same week that a NSW Upper House committee tabled its report on data centres on 5 November 2026. The report makes 23 recommendations, including stronger rules and more weight on the combined effect of data centres on communities. It does not recommend a moratorium, and the NSW Government is under no obligation to adopt its recommendations.