There’s been a lot of speculation and rumors swirling about recently about the location of a data center or centers within Vance County. And while District 4 Vance County Commissioner Dan Brummitt said there has been communication from a Maryland developer, he said the fact is:

“There has been no application made to Vance County for a data center.”

That doesn’t mean it won’t happen, just that it hasn’t happened. Yet.

Brummitt said pending legislation – the Ratepayer Protection Act- that contains strict language governing data centers, and he said Tuesday on TownTalk that developers are waiting to see what the final bill entails.

From what he has heard, Brummitt said Maryland-based developer Tom Natelli is planning to schedule some community meetings in the county “to dispel some of the misinformation and also give more about what their plans are for the community.”

No dates have been set, however, as all parties are waiting to see what legislators do.

Many residents have been in an uproar since a rezoning request came before the planning board about a property along U.S. Hwy 158 Business. The commissioners ultimately approved the planning board’s recommendation to grant the request, which has resulted in residents near the property to voice their concern and disapproval both during meetings and as recently as Wednesday, July 8, when a group of concerned citizens held a town hall-style gathering to express their opposition to a proposed data center.

Brummitt cited Mecklenburg County, VA as an example of the type of economic impact a data center can make. Microsoft has a data center complex there, and Brummitt said it accounts for 65 percent of the county’s property tax base. They just completed construction of a new school and announced just recently that all students’ school supplies will be provided this year.

Those are both beneficial for Mecklenburg County residents, he said.

The cons of having a data center, he said, come into play “if they’re not properly done. Then you’ve got some issues that you may have to deal with.”

During last week’s joint meeting between the planning board and the board of commissioners about the unified development ordinance, Brummitt proposed that N-Focus get started on the portion about data centers first so that the wording can be used as a text amendment to the existing plan that is being updated.

“I think with the information that we have, we can get a text amendment done in fairly short order,” Brummitt said. He said he hopes to get input from the public, too. “They’ve been more than happy to do that in the past,” he added.

Although there was a lot of resistance at first, Brummitt said he’s hearing from people who are studying ordinances from other municipalities and counties. “There’s a number of people who are contributing positive information now to us so that it should make it easier for us to work on the text amendment,” he said.

He said he gets a lot of calls from people about data centers. “At first, it was a lot of ‘No, No, No.’ Now people are starting to study them some and look at other ordinances.”

The calls he gets now are fairly evenly divided into three camps: for, against and still studying.

Brummitt said he’s told people who are upset about the prospect of having a data center in the county that he wouldn’t have a problem with it. “I’ve told them… if there was a 500acre parcel close to my farm, I wouldn’t have a problem with it. And I honestly believe that. Part of development is noise, when you have commercial business, they’re going to make some noise, but that’s part of what we’ve got to have to live in society. As long as those things are not toxic and not poisoning people, then I think that’s just a part of what we have to do. I wouldn’t have a problem if there was one right next to my farm.”

Brummitt is kicking off a series of community town hall forums on Wednesday, July 29 at the Bearpond Volunteer Fire Department to discuss a variety of topics, from public safety and infrastructure to economic development and county priorities.

The event will be from 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.

Submit a question or comment before the event at https://www.vancecounty.org/vance-county-community-town-hall-district-4/

 

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