Data center developer withdraws Apex project after community opposition
A Maryland developer has halted plans to build a 300-megawatt data center near Apex following months of resident pushback.
On Thursday, Natelli Investments announced it would withdraw applications to annex and rezone land near the Shearon Harris Nuclear Plant where the firm had envisioned constructing four 70-foot-tall server facilities on farmland in the unincorporated New Hill community, about 22 miles southwest of Raleigh.
Natelli Investments general manager Michael Natelli told The News & Observer his company would reconsider the project if the Town of Apex ever allows data centers in its zoning ordinance.
Several Apex officials greeted Natelli’s withdrawal positively. “I just want to make sure that our community members’ voices are heard,” Mayor Jacques Gilbert said in a phone interview Thursday. “And it sounds like that’s the case here.”
In a Facebook post, Apex town council member Terry Mahaffey said he would propose a one-year moratorium on any future data center projects at a public meeting Tuesday. “This will give us the time we need to finish the work that we started,” he wrote. “To update the UDO, to put firm rules in place to ensure that any future applicants not harm the health, the well-being, or the quality of life of any existing Apex resident.” Nearby Chatham County last month approved its own 12-month pause on data centers.
Hyperscale data centers like the one Natelli wanted to build have sparked grassroots opposition in Wake County and across North Carolina. In New Hill, a local group called Protect Wake County Coalition had sprouted up to fight the proposal. “I’m truly blown away,” group member Michelle Hoffner O’Connor of New Hill, said Thursday. “The hard work we’ve been doing over the past six months has paid off.”
More developers have looked to build data centers in North Carolina over the past year as artificial intelligence and cloud computing have propelled nationwide demand in these sites. While these facilities can be good sources for property taxes, residents have raised alarms over their appearance, noise, and how much water and electricity they consume.
According to the International Energy Agency, a 100-megawatt data center uses as much water as roughly 2,600 U.S. households. Natelli’s New Hill project sought three times more power.
In an October interview with The N&O, Michael Natelli argued New Hill was ideal for a facility of this scale. “If you’re not going to do a data center here, I don’t know where else you do one,” he had told The N&O. “And I recognize that despite me feeling that, people are not going to want it no matter what.”
