Blue State Residents Balk At NFL Owner’s $16 Billion Data Center Project That Could Cut Their Property Taxes

Residents of a Massachusetts town are fighting a data center that could slash their property taxes, a project of New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft’s company.

Not one of the six people who spoke at a packed Sutton Select Board meeting Tuesday night backed the Kraft Group’s proposed $16 billion, 10-building campus, the Boston Globe reported. The town manager has projected that it would bring in millions of dollars in property taxes each year, potentially cutting residents’ tax bills by thousands of dollars, according to the paper.

Sutton Town Manager Austin Cyganiewicz estimated in a memo to the board that the initial two buildings would pay the town about $10.4 million in property taxes each year starting in fiscal 2031, the Globe reported. With all 10 buildings in fiscal 2035, that would go up to about $27.8 million annually, according to the paper.

“Because the Town raises only what its budget requires, the main effect would be lower tax bills: about $2,300 less for the average single-family home in FY2031 and about $5,800 less in FY2035,” Cyganiewicz wrote, according to CBS Boston.

The town has a structural budget gap that could grow to about $9.1 million by fiscal 2033 if nothing is done, NBC Boston reported.

Republican state Rep. Joseph McKenna, who represents the region, said that the project “could prove to be a real boon for the community,” CBS Boston reported. He told the Globe that he shares residents’ worries about electricity rates, water and noise.

“I’m not willing to say no just because it’s a scary project, it’s new technology, there are concerns,” McKenna told CBS Boston.

Drawing roughly 900 megawatts once it is finished, the campus would be the country’s fourth-largest data center, the Globe said, citing research firm Cleanview.

The Kraft Group is proposing the data center with landowner Unified Global Packaging Group, NBC Boston reported. The developers have told Sutton officials that they have been talking with the regional grid operator about power, and that they are looking at cooling the buildings with treated wastewater, according to CBS Boston.

The Kraft Group, the town of Sutton and Democratic Gov. Maura Healey’s office did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment. Unified Global Packaging Group and National Grid did not immediately respond. Kraft’s company also did not answer the Globe’s request for comment Tuesday.

“The proposal is tentative,” Cyganiewicz wrote, CBS Boston reported. “No application has been filed, and important details on power, water, equipment and site impacts are still to come.”

“This is not a project that’s a done deal,” Select Board Chair Jonathan Anderson said at the meeting, according to the Globe. “It’s far from it.”

“I would like to see this process stopped tonight,” Sutton resident Sarah Osterman Stone said during public comment, the Globe reported.

Those who spoke had concerns about noise, generators, traffic, water and electricity use, as well as potential costs for town services, NBC Boston reported.

Most data centers now in development reuse their water in a closed-loop system, and in many cases developers have paid to improve local water systems, Mark Mills, executive director of the National Center for Energy Analytics, said in a statement to the DCNF.

“Issues around water use have also been misleading, exaggerated or just plain wrong,” Mills said.

ISO New England, which operates the grid in the region, has not gotten a formal proposal for the project from the local utility, National Grid, and has not begun any reviews or studies, communications associate Emma McCorkindale said in a statement to the DCNF. Once it is fully built, the campus would make up about 3.5 percent of New England’s peak demand this summer, which was 25,361 megawatts, she said.

The grid operator is also getting ready to ask federal regulators to sign off on new rules for data centers and other large power users, McCorkindale said.

“The proposal would, among other things, require large loads to supply their own new capacity before connecting to the system,” she said.

ISO New England expects to submit the proposal to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Thursday, after stakeholders vote on it, slides from the Nov. 10 board meeting show.

Electricity in Massachusetts is already expensive. Households in the state paid an average of 30.48 cents per kilowatt-hour in August, about 68 percent more than the national average of 18.16 cents and the third-highest rate of any state, Energy Information Administration figures show.

High power rates and the cost of land and construction are why no large data centers have been built in Massachusetts so far, Matt Eastwood, an analyst at the research firm IDC, told the Globe. The Sutton campus would be the first in the state, according to the paper.

Nationally, data centers already in operation “have not led to increased consumer electricity costs,” Mills said. He cited a 2026 Electric Power Research Institute study that linked the growth of data centers with lower retail rates.

“The reason some residents may be worried is that they don’t know about the facts, but have only heard claims and hyperbole, or perhaps they don’t trust their government to ensure the outcome,” Mills said.

“As a general proposition, data centers do not increase power bills … except perhaps in the very short run,” Benjamin Zycher, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said in a statement to the DCNF.

Healey’s September executive order requires local approval for proposed data centers before the state starts permitting, WBUR reported. Projects with peak demand over 25 megawatts also have to follow the state’s framework, and data centers that can’t supply their own clean power right away have to pay into a new “Ratepayer Protection Fund,” according to the station.

Zycher said that states should not impose any requirements on data center developers “if economic efficiency is the goal.”

“If data center investment is to be distorted by political pressures, then, fine, require the centers to pay all the marginal costs of their power needs,” he said. “But that would engender a seriously adverse precedent.”

Democratic U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern, whose district covers Sutton, is against data centers but said that the decision belongs to residents, the Globe reported.

“But, ultimately, it’s up to the people of Sutton,” McGovern told the paper.

Two of the buildings would start operating in 2029, with another two each year after that until 2033, the Globe reported.

The site would have to be rezoned, which needs a hearing before the Planning Board and approval from two-thirds of Town Meeting voters, according to NBC Boston. There will be public comment sessions over the next few months, and Town Meeting may vote on it in the spring, CBS Boston reported.

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