Data centers in Wake County, North Carolina: 3 projects mapped

Imagery: Esri, Maxar

Wake County has turned away the data centers proposed for it so far, and most of its towns have stopped taking new ones. The largest was the New Hill Digital Campus, a 250-megawatt data center Natelli Holdings planned off Old U.S. Highway One in Apex, near Duke Energy's Shearon Harris nuclear plant and the Western Lake water reclamation plant. The Protect Wake County Coalition fought it over noise, air pollution and its use of energy and water, and in March 2026 Natelli withdrew its annexation and rezoning applications while the town worked on data center rules, saying the project could be revisited if Apex later allows them. "This isn't the end of the conversation," the coalition said.

Apex's council then voted unanimously in April for a one-year moratorium. "It's a big win," said Michelle Hoffner O'Connor of Protect Wake County. Holly Springs approved its own one-year pause in June, and by then Wake County itself, along with neighboring Chatham and Orange counties, had each put a one-year pause on new data centers in place.

In August the fight reached Raleigh. A developer asked the City Council to annex a nearly 14-acre site at 3101 Jones Sausage Road in the southeast of the city, near the Parrish Manor neighborhood and about 1,000 feet from the back of the Chelmshire Downs subdivision, for a 100,000-square-foot data center. Council member Mitchell Silver said hundreds of emails came in over a weekend, "the vast majority" opposed, and more than 30 residents signed up to speak. Mayor Janet Cowell said Beacon Partners, which had requested the annexation, withdrew the proposal that Saturday; Raleigh itself has not adopted a moratorium of its own.

Every project above is drawn from public records, filings and local reporting. Each row links to what it is based on. Statuses change, so check the source date before you rely on one. Found something wrong? Write to [email protected] and it gets fixed.