Far from the roaring speedways, NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt was an outdoorsman who liked to hunt and fish. There was plenty of space to do both on his sprawling land near Mooresville, North Carolina, a quiet town 30 miles north of Charlotte.
Now that land is at the center of a battle over the future of Mooresville that has galvanized residents and pitted Earnhardt’s widow, who wants to develop the property into an enormous data center, against one of Earnhardt’s children, who has joined the fight to stop her.
The proposed $30 billion Mooresville Technology Park would stretch across 400 undeveloped acres, adding several new buildings and an electrical substation. Teresa Earnhardt, Dale Earnhardt’s widow, is seeking approval from the Mooresville Board of Commissioners to rezone his onetime sanctuary as industrial land. Tract, a Denver-based company that builds data centers and leases them to technology companies, has proposed constructing a new campus on that site.
Kerry Earnhardt, Dale Earnhardt’s eldest son, is part of a growing group of residents urging the board to vote “no.”
“My Dad would be livid for his name to be associated” with the project, Kerry Earnhardt posted on Facebook last week, ahead of a community meeting that drew hundreds of people. “Infrastructures like this don’t belong in neighborhoods where people’s natural resources will be depleted, wildlife will be uprooted, and the landscape and lives of the people that call this area home will forever be changed.”
Teresa Earnhardt, Dale Earnhardt’s third wife, who was married to him from 1982 until his death in a racing crash in 2001, did not respond to requests for comment. This is not her first dispute over Earnhardt’s legacy: A decade ago, she sued Kerry Earnhardt, her stepson, after he started an “Earnhardt Collection” home and furniture line, saying he was violating her trademark rights in their shared famous last name; ultimately, Kerry Earnhardt prevailed.
The Mooresville Board of Commissioners is scheduled to vote on the rezoning after a public hearing in September, but on Friday afternoon Mayor Chris Carney cast doubt on the project's future.
Carney, who previously told NBC News he was uncertain on the venture, posted a video on Facebook saying he doesn’t feel able to vote “yes” because Tract hasn’t yet said which tech company would ultimately use the data center. And he suggested other board members shared his concerns.
“No matter what, you can only trust if you know who your final partner is going to be, and we just don’t know that,” said the mayor, who would only cast a vote if there's a tie among the board's six members.
Tract declined to comment to NBC News. A Tract spokesperson said in a statement to The Charlotte Observer Friday that the company was "both disappointed and surprised" and that it was "carefully evaluating our next steps."
Representatives for Tract have glowingly pitched the project to residents, saying the center will be “a good neighbor” while generating hundreds of millions of dollars for the local government.
Earnhardt family disputes aside, the fight in Mooresville echoes similar debates across the country as communities grapple with the potential economic benefits and environmental downsides of giant data centers that are swallowing land and resources to feed America’s insatiable demand for computing power.
Crowds of people have packed meetings from Arizona to Alabama to express fears that these projects could overtax the electric grid, pollute the water and air, and generally disrupt their rural peace with hulking structures emitting a high-tech hum. Supporters, who often include local officials and business development groups, pitch the data centers as a way to infuse economic opportunity and tax revenue into struggling areas and make good use of land that would otherwise sit vacant.
The White House is also praising the projects amid the country’s artificial intelligence race against China. In July, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to fast-track federal permitting for data centers.
There are already more than 5,400 data centers across the U.S., with many more on the way. The consulting company McKinsey said in April that it forecasts roughly $7 trillion in global spending on data centers in the next five years, sparked in large part by demand for processing power to meet the needs of tech companies racing to build and develop advanced artificial intelligence systems.
Data centers, often massive buildings dedicated to housing computing and data storage capacity, can strain local power and water resources. A study by the Environmental and Energy Study Institute found that large data centers can consume up to 5 million gallons of water per day.
While tech companies’ need for data centers is only growing, opponents of these projects have begun making headway in stopping them. In Arizona, the Tucson City Council on Wednesday voted against Amazon’s Project Blue data center, worried that it would raise utility costs. In Oldham County, Kentucky, a data center developer pulled out of a project last month and the county’s fiscal court passed a moratorium on data centers after community pushback over environmental concerns.
Data Center Watch, a group funded by AI firm 10a Labs that tracks local opposition, found in May that $64 billion in data center developments in the U.S. had been blocked or delayed in the previous year.
“The volume, speed, and effectiveness of local opposition are reshaping the landscape of political risks for the data center industry,” Data Center Watch said in a statement to NBC News.
Wendy Reigel, an activist in Chesterton, Indiana, routinely gives advice to other communities fighting data centers after she started a successful movement against a $1.3 billion project in her town last year. She tells those who ask for her help that developers often present the centers as a done deal, but that isn’t the case.
“In the end, people need hope,” she said, “and then they need information, and then they got to work their rear ends off.”
That’s what the organizers in Mooresville have been doing. About 200 people crowded a Board of Commissioners meeting last Monday, many wearing red T-shirts to signal their opposition to the project. All 10 people who spoke at the meeting raised concerns, questioning Tract’s promises about jobs and worrying about the center’s demand for water in a drought-prone region.
“Does a data center belong in the middle of a thriving rural residential community?” Kerry Pennell, who lives near the proposed site, said afterward. She helped distribute about 170 “No Data Center” lawn signs that now dot the surrounding roads. “I don’t want an industrial wasteland a mile from my house,” she said. “I can hear crickets at night.”
René Earnhardt, Kerry Earnhardt’s wife, was among the speakers at the meeting who advocated protecting the open land and the town’s quiet charm from overdevelopment.
“Wealth and power are a destructive combination if used recklessly,” she said. “There’s only so much of this Earth that can be gambled away until there’s nothing left.”
Tract representatives did not speak at the meeting, but the company has previously pushed back on the residents’ criticisms. The nearest residents will hear nothing louder than the thrum of a refrigerator, Tract will pay for infrastructure upgrades that will supply the center with plenty of water and electricity, and the project will generate about 1,000 jobs during construction and 200 permanently, the company said in a presentation. The company currently has 10 projects underway in five states, including Texas, Virginia, Minnesota and Nevada.
Donna Jones, 54, was drawn to Mooresville’s quiet and safety a decade ago when she and her husband were looking for a place to raise their sons. They bought chickens, then goats and ducks, and they never worried when the boys played outside.
“We had a little farm, and we thought we had paradise,” she said.
That little farm is about half a mile from the proposed data center. She worries that the disruption will make it difficult to stay, and just as difficult to leave.
“These are our lives,” she said. “Our property value. What’s going to happen to that? Who’s going to want to buy or build a house next to a data center?”
In a town where many residents still remember Dale Earnhardt or are friendly with his kin, there is a feeling of protectiveness around the racing star, which extends to the land where he spent time.
“Dale was a hero of mine,” said H.A. Mergen, who spoke at Monday’s board meeting. “This land is Dale’s legacy — make no mistake about it. I believe we all know what Dale would want his legacy to be.”
