Mercer County Data Center, Harrodsburg, Kentucky

The Mercer County data center is a proposed 645 megawatt campus on a 555-acre farmland site at Bailey Pike and Handy Pike near Harrodsburg, in Mercer County, Kentucky. A private landowner has been marketing the property, advertised on LinkedIn by a JLL Data Center Services broker; Mercer County Judge-Executive Sarah Steele has said no formal application has been submitted. On August 11, 2026, the Mercer County Fiscal Court passed a one-year moratorium on new data center applications in the unincorporated county, running through August 11, 2027.

The stables across the road became part of the fight: "I've had mares and babies run through fences, and it's just not safe to have a data center right across the street that's going to produce that much noise day in and day out," said Caitlyn Cooper, co-owner of Desmar Stables. Diane Floyd's petition passed 2,000 signatures, a group called We Are Mercer County formed, and more than 50 people spoke at a February 2026 planning and zoning meeting. Burgin Independent Schools Superintendent Chris LeMonds wrote that the facility could generate an estimated $25 to $30 million a year in new tax revenue for the district, a message school board members privately mocked residents opposed to the plan for sending.

On July 30, 2026, the Harrodsburg-Mercer County Joint Planning and Zoning Commission unanimously recommended a data center ordinance that bars use of A1 farmland for data centers and adds fines of up to $25,000 a day. Two days earlier the fiscal court gave the moratorium its first reading; Magistrate Susan Barrington, whose front porch is a mile and a half from the site, said the county needed a moratorium "without a doubt."

The moratorium does not cover the nearby town of Burgin, which has no zoning rules of its own; the developer Panattoni has pitched a data center called Project Bluegrass for land next to the site, and Burgin's council gave first reading in July 2026 to annexing that land into the city. Burgin's council has not scheduled a final vote on the annexation.