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Tony McDonald of Freeport is a partner in JGT2 Redevelopment, owner of the Jay Mill. He has been active in commercial and industrial real estate in Maine since 1987.
In December of 2023, my partners and I acquired the shuttered Pixelle Paper Mill in Jay.
Since then, we have carefully and thoughtfully planned a data center at the site, which is due to start construction in July. It will operate fully within the constraints of the existing grid infrastructure serving the former mill site with no ratepayer-funded grid upgrades needed and no negative impact on ratepayers. The project will use less than 1% of the water consumed by the paper plant and will occupy a former industrial brownfield site with no negative environmental impacts.
We have executed contractual documents to build this $550 million data center, which would create several hundred construction jobs and 125 to 150 permanent high paying jobs in Jay. This project would generate substantial tax revenue for the Town of Jay and for the state, and would inject capital into the local and state economy. We have not requested any public financial support or zoning or rule changes. We have invested millions of dollars in private capital. We believe we have done everything the right way.
There is currently a bill in the state Legislature, LD 307, which proposes putting a moratorium on new data centers in Maine. It effectively would kill the project in Jay.
The legislation would form the “Maine Data Center Coordination Council” to examine the potential benefits and risks of data centers in Maine. The term “data center” has come to stand for the large high-profile projects that are developing across the country. These are “mega-projects” which largely drive the concerns raised over stretched grid capacity, rising electrical rates and dwindling water supplies.
Our Jay project has little in common with these enormous projects and is, in fact, the antithesis of such hyperscaler projects. Our data center project would not require ratepayer-funded grid upgrades, would not consume electricity beyond current levels, would not result in higher electricity costs for ratepayers, and would not tax available water supplies.
Renewable energy would be used, high paying jobs would be created, millions of tax dollars would flow to Jay through real estate taxes and to the state through income taxes.
The primary reason we bought this property was the presence of its large electrical connection to the grid, which we saw, and continue to see, as the key factor in the successful redevelopment of this important Maine industrial site. This existing electrical infrastructure provides us the opportunity to bring this site back to life.
Over the past two-plus years, we have worked extensively with the Maine Department of Environmental Protection to transition this brownfield site for new use as an environmentally sound development. At the request of the state, we agreed to not close the on-site landfill and instead transferred it to the Municipal Waste Hub to help the state with its dwindling landfill capacity. We also worked with the Maine Public Utilities Commission to allow continued use of the existing hydro-electric facilities to provide renewable power on site. We designed, and now have a contract for, a solar facility which will produce 150 MW of renewable power both for on-site use as well as for the grid.
We are not opposed to the formation of the LD 307 council and are not even opposed to a moratorium which can put a pause on any “hyperscaler” type data centers in Maine. However, we respectfully request an exemption from such a moratorium for this project, which has none of the negative attributes that the large “hyperscale” projects have. Without this exemption from LD 307, the redevelopment of the Jay mill project stops and that would be a terrible loss for all.