Natelli Investments withdraws New Hill data center after months of Apex pushback

Natelli Investments confirmed Thursday that it had withdrawn annexation and rezoning applications for the New Hill Digital Campus, a proposed data center development near Old U.S. Highway 1 in New Hill, adjacent to Duke Energy’s Shearon Harris Nuclear Plant and the Western Lake Regional Water Reclamation Facility. WUNC reported Michael Natelli, identified as president of Natelli Holdings, emailed reporters about the withdrawal; WRAL also published an email from Natelli Investments saying, “The town continues its deliberations over zoning ordinance changes necessary to permit data center development within the town limits.”

Local coverage shows wide disagreement over the project’s technical footprint. WUNC and the Raleigh News & Observer described the proposal as a roughly 300-megawatt facility, while WRAL and DatacenterDynamics reported 250 megawatts. Sources also differed on land area, citing between 89 acres and roughly 189 to 190 acres, and on building counts, reporting either four 70-foot-tall server facilities or six 70-foot buildings, with DatacenterDynamics adding a description of four buildings of about 200,000 square feet each. WRAL reported site infrastructure would have included about 80 three-megawatt generators, cooling that would use treated wastewater, and a Duke Energy grid connection.

Opposition from organized residents and elected officials had been mounting for months. INDY Week and Yahoo cited a petition with more than 5,000 signatures against the project, and INDY quoted Protect Wake County Coalition member Michelle Hoffner O’Connor saying, “I’m truly blown away. The hard work we’ve been doing over the past six months has paid off.” WUNC printed a Protect Wake County Coalition statement that said, “The withdrawal gives Apex an opportunity to slow down, put the right ordinances in place, and make sure the community is protected before any data center proposals move forward,” and added, “This isn’t the end of the conversation.”

Political pressure extended beyond local organizing. WRAL reported U.S. Representative Valerie Foushee posted a late-February video saying, “Plainly, I don’t support a new data center in the heart of our district.” Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam told WRAL, “The oligarchs and out-of-state development companies who are proposing to build an AI data center in our community call it construction — but we see right through it. We know its destruction of jobs, our environment and our communities themselves.”

Apex Town Council Member and Mayor Pro Tem Terry Mahaffey, who communicated the news on his Substack and was quoted by INDY saying, “The project will not be moving forward. It’s over,” plans to put forward a one-year moratorium on any further applications, permits, or construction of data centers in Apex. WRAL reported Mahaffey will introduce the moratorium motion at the town council meeting on March 10 and quoted him saying, “This will give us the time we need to finish the work that we started, to update the UDO, to put firm rules in place to ensure that any future applicants not harm the health, the well‑being or the quality of life of any existing Apex resident.”

Economic claims from the developer were also reported before the withdrawal. DatacenterDynamics relayed company figures that the New Hill project would have created 5,800 construction jobs over the build period and generated about $20.7 million in tax revenue for local, county, and state governments. The Raleigh News & Observer used an International Energy Agency comparison to note a 100-megawatt data center can use as much water as roughly 2,600 U.S. households, and framed Natelli’s proposal as seeking three times that power in its reporting.

With the applications withdrawn, attention in Apex and Wake County now turns to the March 10 town council meeting, the one-year moratorium Mahaffey has proposed, and municipal updates to the unified development ordinance that officials say will guide whether similar proposals can return. WUNC reported Michael Natelli signaled the project could be revisited if Apex changes zoning to allow data centers within town limits, leaving the door open to future filings even as the current application has been pulled.