If you’re interested in data centers – or even if you’re already completely sick of hearing about them – October is going to be a very big month in Guilford County.
Both Greensboro city government and Guilford County government will spend a significant amount of time this month trying to figure out what to do about the giant, electricity-hungry facilities that have suddenly become one of the hottest land-use issues in North Carolina and across the nation.
The Greensboro City Council – which already has a 180-day moratorium on large data centers in place – has scheduled two more data center work sessions for Thursday, Oct. 8 and Thursday, Oct. 15.
Meanwhile, on the evening of Oct. 15, the Guilford County Board of Commissioners will hold a public hearing on whether the county should impose its own 180-day moratorium on new data centers in the unincorporated areas of Guilford County.
So, while Halloween will be the most fun day this month, October 15 in particular will be Data Center Day in Greensboro.
The City Council’s work session will begin at 3 p.m. that day in the Plaza Level Conference Room of the Melvin Municipal Office Building at 300 W. Washington St. It will be live streamed.
Two and a half hours later, at 5:30 p.m., the county commissioners will convene several blocks away in the second-floor commissioners meeting room in the Old Guilford County Court House at 301 W. Market St. and take public comment on the county moratorium proposal.
The county’s Sept. 28 public hearing notice says commissioners will consider an ordinance that would halt “the acceptance, processing, and approval of applications for data centers” for 180 days.
The moratorium would apply only to the unincorporated areas governed by Guilford County, not inside Greensboro or the county’s other municipalities.
According to the notice, the purpose of the temporary freeze would be to give county officials more time to study the effect of data centers on utility capacity, environmental resources, public health and other issues – and then write amendments to the Guilford County zoning ordinance specifically addressing the facilities.
That’s important because, as Guilford County Planning Director Leslie Bell told the commissioners at their Sept. 17 data center afternoon work session, the county’s current zoning ordinance doesn’t specifically define a data center.
Bell said the existing ordinance would probably treat one as a light industrial use or possibly as a warehouse-type use.
The planning director also told the commissioners that the county currently has no pending building permit applications or other requests for a new data center in unincorporated Guilford County – which means commissioners have the luxury of writing the rules before some giant project shows up instead of afterward.
At that Sept. 17 meeting, the commissioners voted unanimously to begin the process that led to the Oct. 15 hearing.
County staff told commissioners that data centers can range from relatively small facilities to enormous hyperscale centers with dramatically different requirements for land, water and electricity.
Guilford County Economic Development Director Heather Schaeffer noted at the work session that the county already has a major data center – the roughly 510,000-square-foot American Express facility.
Commissioner Alan Perdue said one mistake would be to write rules under the assumption that every facility is essentially the same.
“One fallacy of this debate is one size fits all,” Perdue said.
Commissioner Pat Tillman likewise urged the county to take its time rather than reach conclusions before commissioners have enough information.
“I think we’re doing it the right way,” Tillman said. “I think taking our time, not rushing, but understanding our leverage and the questions we ask.”
Tillman added that, while he supports the temporary halt, the issue is much broader than simply deciding whether data centers are good or bad.
“I think the moratorium is the wise move,” he said, while adding that “the implications are far reaching.”
Commissioner Carly Cooke said at the same meeting that the moratorium would give the county an opportunity “to be very intentional about our rights and policies and ordinances.”
Bell told the board that staff could use the time to define data centers, decide which zoning districts should allow them and establish an approval process.
Possible regulations could address setbacks, screening of generators, vegetative buffers, building height and appearance, noise, lighting and even what happens when a data center eventually shuts down.
Bell outlined a rough schedule of about 60 days to develop proposed ordinance language, another 60 days for Planning Board consideration and roughly 45 days for the proposal to move through the Board of Commissioners process.
Greensboro is already considerably farther along in that process.
On Tuesday, Aug. 18, the City Council voted 8-0, with one councilmember recusing, to impose a 180-day moratorium on new data centers with electrical demand exceeding 10 megawatts.
That moratorium runs through Sunday, Feb. 14, 2027, and pauses the acceptance, processing and approval of applications for those facilities while the city studies possible permanent regulations.
Projects already permitted or under construction aren’t affected.
The Greensboro City Council has been using the moratorium period to hold a series of unusually detailed work sessions on the subject.
A Sept. 10 meeting focused on water and wastewater issues, with presentations from Greensboro Water Resources Director Mike Borchers and Rebecca Slabaugh, director of water planning for the engineering firm Arcadis.
A Sept. 24 session dealt with state policy and regulatory issues and included David Payne, director of Intergovernmental Affairs and Economic Development for the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.
Now the city has announced two more sessions, both at 3 p.m., on Oct. 8 and Oct. 15. Both will be held in the Plaza Level Conference Room of the Melvin Municipal Office Building and will also be available through the city’s livestream.
The overlapping schedules underscore just how quickly data centers have gone from being a fairly obscure economic-development topic to a major local government concern.
There’s currently no proposal waiting at the door, so the commissioners have the opportunity to decide what they want to allow, where they want to allow it and under what conditions before somebody arrives with plans for the next giant server farm.
After the Oct. 15 public hearing, they’ll have to decide whether six months is enough time to figure all that out.
