By Gordon Anderson | gordon@rantnc.com
The Sanford-Lee County Planning Department has issued a permit for construction of a data center on Lower Moncure Road, The Rant has learned.
The permit, dated September 25, allows for the construction of a more than 300,000 square foot data center at 4015 Lower Moncure Road. It is valid until March 24, 2027.
Virginia-based PointOne announced the 90 megawatt data center project on June 8, in conjunction with developer Helix Ventures. The building will sit on 56 acres and be owned and operated when complete by Dallas-based CyrusOne. CyrusOne operates more than 60 data centers worldwide.
The permit lists the value of the structure at $185,388,791. Kelsey Fehr, vice president of strategic operations and stakeholder relations for PointOne, said that number “represents that capital investment for the building structure alone” without any equipment. She said CyrusOne’s capital investment in related equipment like chillers, generators, and sound attenuation brings the total value of that part of the project to roughly $900 million. When IT equipment from customers is included, the project’s total value is roughly $3.6 billion, Fehr said.
Regarding the issuance of the construction permit, Fehr told The Rant “PointOne is committed to bringing a responsible, thoughtfully designed data center to Lee County in partnership with CyrusOne. As the project moves forward, we are focused on engaging local vendors and contractors where possible, helping ensure that more of the investment and economic activity generated by the development stays within the community. Construction is expected to begin this fall, marking an important milestone in bringing this project to life. As development progresses, we look forward to creating jobs, supporting local businesses, and generating broader economic opportunities in the area. We are committed to being a responsible community partner and believe this project can make a positive, lasting contribution to the Lee County community while delivering the infrastructure needed for the future.”
The proposal came after months of speculation and even uproar in Lee County about data centers. The issue spilled into public discourse toward the end of 2025, when it was reported that a company called Deep River Data was interested in accessing natural gas from an old test well in order to power an AI data operation. Concerns about fracking, as well as potential adverse impacts from that project – which was never officially proposed or submitted for approvals – led local leaders to adopt a rule set governing data centers in Sanford and Lee County. Those rules, among other things, banned fracking-associated data centers.
PointOne’s announcement on June 8 was followed by still more protest of a data center in the area. Citizens packed multiple meetings of the Lee County Board of Commissioners over the summer, using the public comment period to demand a data center moratorium as well as the addition of stricter data center provisions – most prominently provisions regulating noise – to the county’s Unified Development Ordinance. The board has so far declined to take up the issue, and chair Samantha Martin reiterated to The Rant earlier in September that the project’s fate would be decided by administrative review.
The permit indicates the contractor for the project will be Hitt Contracting of Falls Church, Virginia. The cost of the permit was $76,591.20.
Fehr told The Rant in June that the project is considered “phase one” of the development, which would total 430 acres. The remainder of the development hasn’t been planned, she said, and end users and use types are currently unknown other than they would be light industrial uses.
Data centers are typically warehouse-type structures that are home to computer servers powering a variety of operations like cloud storage, website hosting, streaming platforms, financial transactions, and, increasingly, artificial intelligence operations. The clients CyrusOne would serve haven’t been publicly announced. Economic developers expect the building itself to generate at least $1 million in new tax revenue locally, plus whatever revenue comes from the servers and equipment the building contains.
Katy Hancock, CyrusOne’s vice president of community affairs, said the company has more than 25 years of experience in the data center industry and is bringing that to Lee County “as we move forward in accordance with county requirements.”
“Phase I represents more than $900 million in investment, bringing significant new taxable value to Lee County while incorporating modern systems and safeguards to manage sound, water use, power infrastructure, and impacts on surrounding properties,” she said. “As construction moves forward, our focus remains on executing the project responsibly and ensuring this investment creates meaningful, lasting value for Lee County.”
This show’s everyone in Lee County our commissioners care for no one or their lives or their quality of life !! They put a dollar over lives and ruining our environment!! The people spoke against this and even begged them not to do it. They are evil and greedy people only for developer’s and big corporations!! Please help vote these people out in November!!
In other words! We live here and have No control over what go ernment officials wish to do with our county.
This is disgraceful. Absolutely no respect for the citizens of Lee County.
Again it’s proven that the word “Representatives” is a 🤬 JOKE in Sanford/Lee County. A joke that’s— of course— on us, the residents forced repeatedly to pay for their bafflingly STUPID decisions. I mean, do these 🤬’s watch the 🤬 news??? *** No, nevermind, scratch that. Foolish question. They’ve not even seen The Light of 🤬 Day since the inception of the tyrannical scourge that is SAGA. But, how could they, really???… With their poor little heads shoved SO FAR up the asses of the “Private Donors” who actually run this City-County Shitshow… 😒
Lee County has 70,000 people. About 40 – 50 live within a mile of this site. When land is next to or near railroad lines, gas lines, cross country power lines, a soon to be regional airport, rock quarries, electric generating plants, and brick pits – that’s an industrial corridor. It’s been an industrial corridor for over a century. When the City moved the airport out there people in the area were specifically told of this eventuality. There are some patches of raw, rural land near RDU airport, next to the RTP, even out at Carter Finley and Lenovo stadiums. But these patches of land, rural as they may seem, exist in a context of non-rural, non-residential development. There is land in Western Lee County around Pocket,Western Chatham County, Northern Moore County, and Randolph County that is under no pressure to urbanize. Move out toward the House in the Horseshoe or the NC Zoo and you will be safe from the Triangle’s Growth.
Are you telling people on Lower Moncure rd. To sell there land and move some elderly, some just build a home and starting a family. This was done secretly and people spoke up against rezoning but our tax money hungry commissioners did it against planning board 4 to 3 vote. One year of people in the area around coming to speak against it !! Kirk Smith told people that called pleading not to do it and that’s what he said just move if you don’t like it. 🖕
Dude. Stop playing like your Moses on Mt Sinai. A Planning Establishment that changes the damn Sacred Plans as often as they change their underwear, cannot be credited with… Well, they can’t be credited with much of anything 🤷🏼♀️
Where I live, in Cumnock, is a great example. We, too, are told: “Alas, my Child. THIS WAS ALWAYS THE PLAN.” In a word, that is BULLSHIT.
I’ve read the Plans. All of them. A few highlights: The first Plan did prescribe Industry- as Industry (the mines) was already here. It also “decreed” the development of Historic Preservation Areas to honor and recognize the still historically significant (and enormously tragic) mine explosions here. (Of course, that didn’t happen.)
In a later Plan, the land flanking the Lee Co side of our beloved Deep River was zoned a “Conservation District” (?). It restricted Industry and mandated very Low Density Residential. As Cumnock lies within a horseshoe of the River, the zoning covered all of it.
Then that was thrown out the window when— against our valid protests, and the supposed “law” established by zoning— we got a chicken plant. A giant 🤬 chicken plant. Right on the river, of course.
Fast forward to now. The City has annexed every acre here that no one currently lives on. They’ve zoned it all Commercial, Industrial, and High Density Residential.
So much for the Sacred Plans. The Talking Heads love to say that their UDO is a “living document”… It’s not. It’s quicksand. It’s 🤬 toilet paper.
You hit the nail on the HEAD!!! 🔨
Shameful, Shameful, Shameful!!!! Air, water and noise pollution are coming. Its? bad enough that we have all of these tacky developers building ugly houses and now this??? All for a buck? And the buffoons that issued the permit, I imagine you’ll be moving away to your 2nd home to escape the pollution and lack of water that is left in Lee County. We don’t have Representatives in Lee County, The so-called Representatives are Negligent, Disconnected and Incapable of their Positions, Complete Failures and a Disgrace.
Why dont they just buy the whole community i got 30 acres right across from where the data center goes. They can have more then. The community is messed up.
Congratulations, you hit the jackpot. Your land is now a valuable economic development site with access to sewer, new electric lines, and soon City Water. It has effectively tripled in value. In 15 years it might make a great shopping center. If you really want to sell it, contact a commercial realtor in Wake County, then use the profit to buy land around Carbonton and High Falls and you rest assure of dying before it develops, if ever.
I agree with all of you, nobody cares about us anymore, they don’t listen , the whole world is a mess !!
I sure hope that any of these county commissioners, that do not live in Lee County, have to buy and then move into Lee County!
Just an FYI, I, and others, have yet to receive requested public records on this project. I love Lee County and have many dear friends and acquaintances there.
Therese Vick
Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League
Clayton NC
The deed was done some 45 years ago when the commissioners zoned the area Industrial. Those people are gone.
The residents that lived there knew that the farming charm would not last forever. You could place blame on realtors that sold property out there since the re-zoning, promoting the quietness of living in the country, without telling your property was zoned industrial would you have taken the chance?
They always say “Buyer beware” when it comes to real estate. Unfortunately, the onus is put on the buyer.
Sanford has quite a few mixed-use areas. This issue will continue to happen. Ideally, farming and industry should border a county, then businesses and shopping centers, then churches and apartments and finally residential. Each is supposed to be a buffer for the other to minimize conflicts. However, you will never be able to please everyone. And you cannot pick and choose which industries you will and will not allow.
I don’t know what folks on Lower Moncure Road were told or thought in 1966 when the City started to move the water plant to NC 42 near Lower River Road. I don’t know what these folks were told in the 1970’s when CP&L elected to build a nuclear plant just a few miles up the road. I do know that folks who lived in that area in 1992 were told point blank that the area would urbanize especially after the City voted to move the Airport out of the Mobile Home Parks in Jonesboro. All these decades later as the Airport has expanded, as City sewer has been installed on Lower Moncure Road and as Central Electric has been in the planning stages and now the finishing stages of a new point of electric delivery from Duke since 2023, how can anyone living on Lower Moncure Road be surprised?
They are if you been there for before 1966 asshole !! Question DO YOU WANT DATA CENTERS IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD OR BACK YARD??
Hey Kirk we are tired and sick of your lies and deception !! You hide in the shadows and destroy people’s lives and the environment around them!! You and Jimmy Randolph use nondisclouser to bring in industry in with out anyone knowing! And you say we should have seen this coming!! Hitler must be your hero!! You are sick in your mind and are a heartless man!! Go somewhere else and worship the Devil!!
Like I said you think 5 generations of family’s living there are suppose to pak up and move !! This area is not a industrial area!! Alot of the land is tree farms. Do you even no what tree farms are? Man you are a heartless person!!
“You cannot pick and choose industries”? If the “you” refers to citizens… well, yeah… We can’t pick or choose a damn thing. We *should* have some influence in decisions. Mass protests and widespread public outcry DO MATTER elsewhere, as they should. And I’m old enough to remember when they still did here. But now decisions are made by SAGA, aka, Some Private Rich Dudes.
***SAGA legitimized everything that’s traditionally been wrong in small-town politics: the Good Ole Boy Network, backroom deals, bribery, corruption. Now, decisions are already set in stone before the public ever hears a word… SanLee equates our devolution to damn 1920s Chicago to *PROGRESS *… Our local govt is nothing but a Front. Led by a bunch of Sell-outs, Liars; Spineless Straw Men pandering to the Real Leadership behind closed doors. Puppets. Dancing monkeys…. There ARE some honest, Good People with good intentions among them, but they’re silenced and neutered just as we are***
The Shady Rulers, of course, *do* have the authority to choose specific industries. That’s the REASON zoning laws exist— to designate specific industries allowed in specific places. To facilitate sensible and responsible “growth”.
Take a look at our zoning and annexation maps, our UDO— any of our local idiotic “plans”, documents, decisions. Most are in direct conflict with the well established tenets of planning and growth. They’ve haphazardly created a disaster of Spot Zoning, County Islands, Non-conforming Everydamnthing. All the Cardinal Sins of City/County Planning are well-embraced by our local Puppet Masters.
They do whatever the hell they want. Wherever the hell they want. When the rules THEY WROTE don’t allow it, they just rewrite the damn rules. Industry WAS inevitable and expected. A Data Center WAS NOT.
What about the the people that have lived there 3 to 5 generation’s? They were there long before any of this rapid development. Developer’s want us to move and buy our land cheap and the county commissioners and SAGA don’t care about the people living around any industry. Question is DO YOU WANT DATA CENTERS IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD!!
Did not Cain kill Able in or near a farm field?
Do you want a data center in your back yard!! This is our home many have 5 generations on it are all 5 generations suppose to pack up and leave? Man your heartless human being.
FYI Jonathan Boyce is running against Kirk Smith as a write-in candidate in Lee County Board of Commissioners District 2.
https://ballotpedia.org/Jonathan_Boyce_(Lee_County_Board_of_Commissioners_District_2,_North_Carolina,_candidate_2026)