Natelli Investments pulled the plug last Thursday on plans for a massive data center spread across roughly 189 acres in Apex’s New Hill community, a move that delivered a hard-fought win to residents who had spent months organizing against the project. The New Hill Digital Campus had been pitched as a cluster of large server buildings with heavy power and water demands near Duke Energy’s Shearon Harris plant. With the proposal off the table for now, town leaders suddenly face a big call: the Apex Town Council on Tuesday is set to weigh a one-year moratorium on new data center permits.
Developer withdraws annexation and rezoning requests
Natelli Investments announced it was withdrawing its annexation and rezoning applications for the New Hill Digital Campus, effectively halting the project for the moment, as reported by Bisnow. The company said it would “determine an appropriate course of action” if Apex later revises its zoning rules to explicitly allow data centers, according to the same coverage.
What the project would have looked like
The project’s own website described a campus of four 200,000 square foot buildings, designed for up to 300 megawatts of capacity and cooled with treated wastewater, according to New Hill Digital Campus. Industry coverage outlined the plan as a roughly 250 megawatt development with about 80 three megawatt backup generators and six 70 foot structures on about 189 acres, details reported by Data Center Dynamics.
Neighbors organized and petitioned
Opponents rallied under the banner of the Protect Wake County Coalition and launched a Change.org petition that has collected roughly 4,700 signatures against the project. Petition organizers flagged concerns about noise, diesel emissions from generator testing, and heavy water use. Both the coalition and the petition characterized Natelli’s withdrawal as a partial victory, while pressing Apex to update zoning so that large campus-style data facilities are clearly treated as heavy industrial uses.
Apex leaders weigh a moratorium
Apex Town Council member Terry Mahaffey said he will propose a one year moratorium on new data center applications at Tuesday’s council meeting to give staff time to revise the town’s Unified Development Ordinance, according to WUNC. Nearby Chatham County approved its own 12 month pause on new data center permits last month while officials study environmental and infrastructure impacts, WRAL reported.
Why this fight matters beyond Apex
Developers have been chasing North Carolina for its grid access and available rural land, but community pushback has already stalled or reshaped several large data center plans as residents push for tighter local rules. Bisnow notes that the state could roughly double its data center capacity to around 6 gigawatts over the next decade, a projection that helps explain both the rush from developers and the rising resistance on the ground.
Natelli has said it may revisit the New Hill Digital Campus if Apex changes its zoning, and residents have signaled they plan to keep pressure on elected officials to set firm limits on noise, water use, and backup power testing, as reported by WRAL. What the council decides on Tuesday will determine whether the pause becomes formal policy or whether the fight over data center siting in Wake County rolls straight into the next planning cycle.
