Dale Earnhardt’s widow riles neighbors with planned $30B data center on her 400 acres
Wearing “No Data Center!” stickers, about 50 people attended an information session Wednesday to oppose a $30 billion planned data center campus on 400 acres owned by the widow of NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt.
The Mooresville Board of Commissioners called the meeting at Town Hall to learn more about the proposed Mooresville Technology Park from its developer, Denver, Colorado-based Tract, and express their own concerns.
Although no public comment was allowed, opponents packed the meeting room, including Dale Earnhardt’s oldest son, Kerry, and wife, René.
“This is not about Dale Earnhardt,” Kerry Pennell, a lead opponent who lives on Patterson Farm Road near the site, told The Charlotte Observer Wednesday. “This is not about Teresa Earnhardt. This is about the invasion by the town of our backyards. And it’s about the future of Mooresville.”
If commissioners approve Teresa Earnhardt’s rezoning request and extend town water and sewer lines along N.C. 3 to the project, hundreds more rural acres may open to development, Pennell said.
Opponents created a website, No Data Center Mooresville.com, that details their concerns, which also include noise and light pollution and what happens if the park some day closes.
The technology park also “will end our natural wildlife pattern, part of the beauty of living in the country,” neighbor Ellen Abercrombie told the Mooresville Planning Board in April.
N.C. 3 also is called Dale Earnhardt Highway. The champion NASCAR driver’s former headquarters, Dale Earnhardt Inc., was based on the road and drew fans of the No. 3 car driver from across the country for decades.
Earnhardt, who was from Kannapolis, died on Feb. 18, 2001, during a last-lap crash at the Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway.
The site his widow owns and wants to put the data center on is behind Coddle Creek ARP Church, between Patterson Farm and Rustic roads. The property lies in one of the last stretches of active farmland in Mooresville.
Teresa Earnhardt didn’t attend Wednesday’s meeting or two meetings over the months where the Planning Board issued one recommendation against the project and one in favor.
The Town Board will most likely hold a public hearing and vote on Teresa Earnhardt’s request at a meeting in mid-August, Mayor Chris Carney said.
Under Mooresville’s form of government, Carney votes to break 3-3 votes by the commissioners on zoning and other issues.
Carney and commissioners told Wednesday’s audience they’re still gathering information.
The mayor said officials with the North Carolina Department of Commerce have called him in support of the project, and Iredell County commissioners have told him they back the plan.
Still, he said, “If you think you know where any of the seven people on this board are with this, you’re greatly mistaken.”
Commissioner concerns about the project
At Wednesday’s meeting, commissioners Gary West and Will Aven told Tract officials they’re concerned the developer hasn’t completed a single data center. Tract has 10 projects “in different stages of development” nationwide, a company official replied.
The town also doesn’t know what company would operate the data center, such as Google or Apple, commissioners said. Aven said commissioners don’t even know what the data center would look like.
“I’m a little nervous about who I’m getting in bed with,” Aven told Tract officials. “I don’t want a divorce at the end of the road. We have a lot of work to do to get to the dating stage at this point.”
Visiting data centers in other counties
Aven, Carney and town commissioner Lisa Qualls visited a Google data center in Lenoir recently to check out noise levels and truck traffic.
On Tuesday, accompanied by two Charlotte Observer reporters, Carney held a decibel meter around the fenced perimeter of the decade-old Apple data center campus on Startown Road in Maiden, Catawba County. Readings were negligible, including at the entrance to the property.
“I can’t imagine noise will be offensive from what I’ve heard so far (visiting two data centers),” he said.
Only regular traffic traveled roads around the Apple site, and only one truck entered the data center during Carney’s unannounced visit.
“I figured, it’s better not to have anybody put on airs for us,” Carney said about not alerting Apple. “Just come and find out what we think, see and hear.”
“We have no secrets on this,” the mayor said. “We want everybody to be fully aware of what we think are problems, or what we think are opportunities. To learn from the the mistakes other places have made, or are they legitimate problems that there’s no way around.”
He said he urged each commissioner to visit a data center. “If you don’t, you can’t speak intelligently about it,” he said.
Acres of natural-growth trees masked Apple’s data center buildings, except for a small one on Startown Road beside a town of Maiden fire station. Planted trees hid Apple’s large solar farm across Startown Road from the data center entrance.
“It looks like they’ve been very intentional in trying to have noise abatement,” the mayor said. “Obviously they made a berm, they put these trees here so you can’t see (the solar farm).”
Carney also noted new homes under construction bordering a side of the property, and active farmland and a cattle ranch nearby. Later, he walked into the fire station at the data center entrance and spoke with a firefighter, who told him that the data center is quiet.
“If it weren’t for the occasional beeping of a backing up truck outside the neighboring Apple building, they wouldn’t hear a thing,” Carney said.
Developer touts jobs, tax revenue
According to the Mooresville Technology Park website, the data center would “play a key role in supporting the Southeast’s digital needs.”
The park would bring 277 “recession-resistant” jobs, including 195 paying $125,000 a year, Kristin Dean of Tract has told the Planning Board. Tract would develop the park, basically buildings with computer servers.
The data center will generate hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue for Mooresville, Iredell County and local public schools over 20 years, according to Mooresville Technology Park.com.
Dean reiterated the expected tax revenue before the Planning Board. “It’s in the multiple billions of dollars,” she said.
The first building would be completed in 2029, Dean said.
A 100-foot buffer would separate the project from surrounding properties, and a third of the property would remain undeveloped, Dean said.
The park would generate about 1,000 vehicle trips a day, a third of the number allowed under the current zoning of the site, which allows for 370 single-family homes, Dean said.
Three-quarters of an acre would be reserved for a police/EMS substation, she said.
On Wednesday, Tract officials said light and noise would be negligible to neighbors, as buildings would be well within the site.
Sound-generating equipment, for instance, would be in the central part of the acreage, and noise would be limited to 55 decibels. That equates to the sound of your refrigerator or a drip coffee maker, Tract officials said.
“Most of the surrounding homes would be quite a distance from the buildings,” Dean said.
This story was originally published June 11, 2025 at 4:28 PM with the headline "Dale Earnhardt’s widow riles neighbors with planned $30B data center on her 400 acres."