American Tower's Raleigh Data Center Expansion Slips Past New Moratorium
American Tower submitted plans to expand its West Raleigh data center four days before the Raleigh City Council enacted a six-month moratorium on new data center development. The project may be exempt from the moratorium, but it remains unclear whether city staff or the Raleigh Board of Adjustment will decide whether the expansion can proceed.
American Tower plans to add about 10,000 square feet to its existing data center on Chapel Hill Road in West Raleigh, creating a second data hall and bringing the facility to approximately two megawatts of IT capacity. The company submitted its expansion and special-use permit paperwork four days before the Raleigh City Council approved a six-month moratorium on data center development by a 7-1 vote.
Because the application predates the moratorium, the project may proceed under Raleigh's previous rules. American Tower maintains the expansion is permitted by right but filed a special-use permit application under protest, leaving the approval path unresolved. The Raleigh Board of Adjustment typically handles such permits, while Council members Jane Harrison and Christina Jones have raised differing concerns about the timing and transparency of the project.
The moratorium was adopted to give Raleigh time to study data center impacts and develop new regulations, including issues involving facility size and electricity demand. The article also notes that opposition helped derail a separate, larger data center proposal in southeast Raleigh and that legal uncertainty surrounding a Chatham County moratorium could influence future challenges to local restrictions.