In late September, WGHP reported on Wake County residents’ opposition to the worst possible thing that could happen to a community: a proposed energy-sucking, water guzzling DATA CENTER to be built off Highway 1 near Apex, with 70-foot tall buildings and eighty (80) noisy polluting diesel generators.
What has NOT been reported on by local media are the data centers popping up right here in our neck of the woods – in High Point and Greensboro. And, while the WGHP report mentions new jobs, the fact is that while a new data center brings construction jobs as the facility is being built, they operate largely autonomously and produce FEW permanent full-time jobs.
Greensboro is already home to FIVE (5) data centers, with two more on the way:
(1) A 54,000-square-foot DC BLOX High Point Data Center planned for the intersection of Piedmont Parkway and Sheraton Court, alongside the Bicentennial Greenway and East Fork Deep River:
This is the site map from DC Blox’s website. It’s sideways, and you can’t read the fine print:
We were able to make out “Piedmont Parkway,” “Sheraton Court” and “Deep River” well enough to pinpoint it (in red) on this Google map:
AND
2) an ImpactData “Dream Center” at Gateway Research Park, to be built at 2901 East Gate City Blvd on land owned by NC A&T University. Developed in partnership with Raeden, this 115,000-square-foot facility will launch with 20 megawatts (MW) of information technology capacity in its initial phase (2nd quarter of 2026) but will scale up to over 300MW, and will be powered by Duke Energy, A 300MW data center falls in the “hyper scale” size category, and the massive amount of power it will consume is comparable to the energy needs of a medium-sized town.
A January 2023 WFDD report said the “Dream Center” data center project is primarily funded by federal COVID-19 dollars (ARPA funding) and quoted the Guilford County Schools superintendent as stating that the data center “will benefit students, families and Greensboro residents, provide space to support students’ academic recovery after the pandemic, and be a resource for adult education and professional development.”
The report also said that the “Dream Center” investment totals $130 million, but that the center is expected to create only 28 new jobs.
Residents in some North Carolina towns are fighting these monstrosities with success. But, just as North Carolina’s state legislators continue their push to attract more polluting chemical companies, they are doing the same with giant data centers.
The Triad Business Journal reported in August that “…North Carolina is attracting data center investments from tech giants amid the rapid rise of artificial intelligence. In June, Amazon announced plans to invest $10 billion to build a data center campus in Richmond County. Apple is expanding its data center operations in Catawba County, and Microsoft could be planning a data center in Person County after buying a 1,300-acre megasite there last year.”
[The Triad Business Journal has been reporting on the arrival of and planning for many of these chemical companies and data centers but at a subscription cost of $210/year, the Journal is outside the price range of average North Carolinians.]
The problem with having one data center in your community is that it will lead to more. Data center hubs across the country have shown that tech companies tend to build them in clusters where there’s a reliable power supply, access to water, tax breaks/incentives and affordable land. That bit of information is courtesy of Business Insider – and so is this MUST-WATCH video that discusses the secrecy, exemptions, and nontransparency enjoyed by these facilities, and WHAT IT’S LIKE TO LIVE NEAR A DATA CENTER:
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