On Thursday in rural Richmond County, Amazon ceremonially broke ground on what local officials call one of the largest capital project in North Carolina history: a $10 billion, 20-building data center campus to aid the company’s projected artificial intelligence growth.
It is one of several data centers Amazon is constructing nationwide to service its Amazon Web Services platform. The company announced the Richmond campus in June, saying it will hire at least 500 workers to work there within the next five years.
Under an incentive agreement Amazon entered with the county, the company is only required spend $1 billion and hire 50 full-time workers at the site by the end of 2030 in order to receive tax breaks.
“Generative AI is driving increased demand for advanced cloud infrastructure and compute power, and our investment will support the future of AI from AWS data centers in the Tar Heel State,” Amazon wrote in a June blog post.
It is building its future North Carolina data center on nearly 800 acres in an industrial park near the cities of Rockingham and Hamlet. The land is in the south-central Sandhills section of the state, within 100 miles of both Charlotte and Raleigh. Amazon projects the site’s 20 buildings will each span between 200,000 and 225,000 feet.
Amazon did not receive state economic incentives for the project but can receive 50% property tax and 65% personal property tax relief from Richmond County over a 20-year grant. The company said new hires will include engineers, operations managers, and security personnel. U.S. Rep. Richard Hudson and Mark Harris were scheduled to attend Thursday’s event alongside Lt. Gov. Rachel Hunt and other elected state and local officials.
Richmond is ranked about North Carolina’s 40 most economically distressed counties, with an average annual wage of $44,153 according to the state commerce department. It’s population has decreased over the past few years, in contrast to North Carolina overall.
“Richmond County is thrilled to welcome Amazon to our community,” county economic developer Martie Butler said in the June announcement. “This monumental investment will not only bring new opportunities and jobs to our residents but will also transform the future of Richmond County and the Sandhills for generations to come.”
Data center energy questions answered and unanswered
Data centers house rows of servers that process and store data. Some are smaller “edge” facilities closer to the end users while others are mammoth “hyperscale” complexes operated by some of the world’s most valuable companies. Just this week, Amazon opened an $11 billion data center in Indiana, and Microsoft told investors it plans to double its data center space within two years.
Residents in several communities across North Carolina have protested data center plans in their areas, citing concerns over noise, aesthetics and energy use. Amazon declines to share the energy usage of its facilities.
Richmond County’s Energy Way Industrial Park, where Amazon is building, went through Duke Energy’s Site Readiness Program, which aims to help communities ready land for economic development. The industrial park “is served by robust transmission infrastructure and capacity to support large-scale energy users,” Duke Energy spokesperson Garrett Poorman said in an email.
“To move forward, large-load customers are required to sign agreements that include financial protections for existing customers,” Poorman wrote. “These agreements outline any minimum billing requirements, credit security provisions and other terms that ensure new customers pay their fair share — including the cost of any infrastructure upgrades made to serve them.”