Microsoft has revealed its plans to build a sprawling campus north of Durham near the North Carolina-Virginia border, according to local officials. The 1,350-acre Person County Mega Park north of Roxboro will include a data center.
The tech giant purchased the land for the megasite near Hyco Lake in October 2024 for nearly $27M without revealing its construction plans, leading many at the time to assume a data center was in the works.
Microsoft reportedly plans to begin the permitting process for the development of a data center this year.
There were scant details about what the development may ultimately look like in a Person County press release announcing the deal. However, county officials said the company "will pay its own way to ensure its development does not increase electricity prices" and "minimize water use while replenishing more than consumed."
North Carolina is poised to roughly double its data center capacity from 3 gigawatts to 6 GW in the next decade, according to an Associated Builders and Contractors Carolinas report released earlier this month. The state is part of a secondary wave of data center markets that are becoming more attractive to developers, according to a February JLL report.
The state currently has 40 operating data centers, the report states. Developers are drawn to North Carolina because of strong grid coverage from Duke Energy, abundant availability of land, business-friendly taxes and state incentives, ABC Carolinas reported.
In January, Corning Inc. made a $6B deal with Meta Platforms Inc. to provide support to boost the company’s data center footprint across North Carolina. Last November, Edgecombe County approved zoning changes to allow for a $19B data center development.
However, there has also been pushback against data center development.
Earlier in February, Chatham County joined other local governments in the state in placing a one-year moratorium on new data center permitting.
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