By Carolina Journal staff
Pittsboro, NC – A judge will allow a Chatham County data center project to move forward despite the county’s moratorium on new data centers.
Eco TIP West had sued the county in April. The company argued that its project already was under way when county commissioners voted in February to block new data centers for a year.
Superior Court Judge John Morris issued his ruling Thursday, a little more than two weeks after holding a hearing in the dispute.
“After careful consideration of the file, counsels’ legal briefs, Plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment, and the exhibits and arguments of counsel during the August 31 hearing, the Court finds that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that Plaintiff is entitled to a judgment in its favor as a matter of law,” Morris wrote.
Morris awarded attorney’s fees to Eco TIP. Plus “the determination and award of Plaintiff’s damages is reserved for further proceedings,” according to the order.
“The Moratorium, and the County’s refusal to recognize that Eco TIP’s existing data center project is exempt, has and continues to cause Eco TIP substantial financial and other losses,” the company’s lawyers wrote on Aug. 27. “The County did not simply make one mistake but violated almost every applicable statute and governing legal principle. In short, the Moratorium is a legal trainwreck that should have never been approved, and never been applied, to take away Eco TIP’s property rights in its project.”
Development company Eco TIP spent $11 million on the 750-megawatt data center project at Chatham County’s Moncure megasite, according to the court filing.
“The Data Center Project is currently a use permitted by right under the Chatham County Zoning Ordinance in the Heavy Industrial district,” Eco TIP’s lawyers explained. “This means there are no additional approvals required to develop and operate that use. Multiple County officials, including the County Manager, the County Attorney, and the County Planning Director have been aware of the Data Center Project and Eco TIP’s efforts toward development since at the very latest, October 2025.”
County officials issued a document giving the company “statutory vested rights in the Data Center Project under N.C. Gen. Stat. §160D-108 and § 143-755, which are protected property rights under the state and federal Constitutions,” according to the court filing.
“Then, in early January 2026, County officials made a hurried decision to enact the Moratorium and block development of all data centers in the County for at least one year,” Eco TIP’s lawyers wrote. “The decision to undertake this course of action was made without input from, or notice to, Eco TIP. In fact, public records show that one of the Moratorium’s primary purposes was to stop the Data Center Project because TIP West was the only viable location for a data center in Chatham County at that time. The Moratorium was also rushed, which resulted in a sloppy and poorly drafted document which violated almost every statutory mandate.”
The company’s request to have its exemption recognized by county commissioners “was not even acknowledged,” according to the brief. “A subsequent letter to the County Attorney again asking for the exemption was summarily denied with no explanation or analysis. The County also unlawfully refused to process Eco TIP’s pending site plan application for the Data Center Project, citing only the Moratorium as a reason.”
“Eco TIP realizes that data centers are a controversial topic and that at least thirty North Carolina local governments have passed similar moratoria,” the company’s lawyers wrote. “This does not, however, mean these moratoria are legal or that all data centers should be stopped in their tracks. Eco TIP’s Data Center Project is located in exactly the place in Chatham County where these types of uses are intended to go, and the location the County itself chose to not only allow that use, but to encourage and recruit intense industrial uses. There was simply no reason to apply the Moratorium to Data Center Project, other than political cover.”
“Eco TIP filed this lawsuit to enforce its rights, recover its damages and attorney’s fees, and force the County to follow the law,” according to the brief.
“Plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment presents a straightforward question: does Plaintiff have a legal right to proceed with its proposed data center despite the County’s moratorium? The answer is no,” Chatham County responded in its own Aug. 27 brief. “The moratorium was validly adopted and is not an unlawful down-zoning. Plaintiff has no vested right to construct a data center, having never obtained a development approval authorizing that use.”
“Plaintiff cannot establish that the moratorium was adopted in bad faith or deprives it of all economic value so as to violate the ‘Law of the Land’ Clause,” the county argued. “Plaintiff is not entitled to permit choice, having neither submitted a complete application before the moratorium’s effective date nor exhausted its administrative remedy for the County’s inaction. And in any event, discovery remains necessary to test whether Plaintiff’s claimed expenditures were made in good-faith reliance on any qualifying approval, making summary judgment premature under Rule 56(f).”