Mayor: Mooresville to deny $30 billion data center by Dale Earnhardt’s widow
Mooresville is set to deny Teresa Earnhardt’s rezoning request for a $30 billion data center in east Mooresville if the measure comes to a vote Sept. 15, Mayor Chris Carney said Friday.
In an exclusive interview with The Charlotte Observer, Carney said he and the six town commissioners can’t support the Mooresville Technology Park rezoning without knowing which tech giant will buy, own and operate the center on Earnhardt’s 400 acres, and their tax-incentive and other demands.
Teresa Earnhardt is the widow of NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt.
Carney votes in case of a 3-3 deadlock by the commissioners.
Carney said he informed data center developer Tract, based in Denver, Colorado, of the board’s likely rejection of the request. Tract can choose to request that its request be pulled from consideration, he said.
“We are both disappointed and surprised to learn of the Board’s position in this manner,” Tract said in an emailed statement to the Observer through a spokesperson. “In light of this development, we are carefully evaluating our next steps.”
Carney said he and commissioners “went and looked at what Amazon does versus what Microsoft does, which is different than Apple, Google, and they all kind of have their own thing. And there are some that have been done really well. But without knowing who it is you’re eventually going to end up with, it’s almost impossible to make a decision.
“Every one of us has raised that as our biggest issue because, at the end of the day, even if we really liked the development crew, they’re really not the person we’re going to be married to for the next two or three decades,” the mayor said.
The tech company that buys the data center “may try to come in and decide, after you’ve done all this work, to negotiate long-term incentives that the economics don’t work for you anymore,” Carney said. “But we’re pregnant with the deal because you’ve got the utilities in and all the other stuff.”
“So we, as a group, have had a really hard time with that, and I just can’t imagine anybody voting yes without the answer,” he said. “This question is fundamental to them voting yes.”
He and the Town Board have tried for a year to get an answer to the ownership question, Carney said.
At a public information meeting in June, Tract officials told the board they don’t have a buyer yet, the Observer reported.
“Their model is to get it built and then go find the user, and I guess that’s the way the world likes to work now,” Carney said. “I get that. If I’m Apple, I don’t want to be building a campus. I want somebody to build it for me, and then I can just move in, right?”
“At the end of the day, the only thing that makes sense about a data center to a municipality is, are you going to collect a lot of tax dollars,” Carney said. “It is a financial decision.”
Later Friday, in his weekly Facebook post about town happenings, Carney mentioned sprawl as another concern.
Extending water lines to the data center would open the surrounding area to even more residential development, he said.
Mooresville is in demand with companies looking to relocate headquarters and operations from other states, the mayor said.
“There are so many opportunities with us in Mooresville for industry to come and bring great jobs, we really don’t need to blindly swing,” he said. “And I think this not knowing who the final partner is, is not going to help us with purposeful growth.”
About 200 neighbors have expressed their opposition to the rezoning at government meetings. They also created a website, No Data Center Mooresville.com, that details their concerns, everything from noise to traffic to light pollution.
Opponent Lynne Taylor said she and other residents will continue “keeping the pressure up” on Carney and the commissioners.
This story was originally published August 8, 2025 at 6:06 PM with the headline "Mayor: Mooresville to deny $30 billion data center by Dale Earnhardt’s widow."