Project Iron Spur Awaiting decision
~129-acre hyperscale campus proposed across from Rural Hall town hall; Forsyth County Planning Board recommended denial. Commissioners held the public hearing July 30, 2026 - decision pending.
Key facts
- Filing LLC
- Project Iron Spur
- Size
- 129 ac
- Location
- Rural Hall (Forsyth County), North Carolina
- Hearing
- 2026-07-30
- Stage today
- Awaiting decision
Source
read 2026-08-07
What to do next
Next step: Heard 2026-07-30; decision pending. Call the board clerk for the vote date and get on the notification list.
What has happened so far (7 events)
- 2026-03-17announcement
Charlotte-based developer Drox Group LLC presented its proposed hyperscale data center on roughly 129 acres in Rural Hall at a March community meeting, where residents raised concerns about noise, pollution, and energy and water demands. · source - 2026-04-13vote
The Rural Hall Town Council unanimously passed a resolution in April opposing the rezoning needed for the Drox Group data center. · source - 2026-06-11vote
The Forsyth County (City-County) Planning Board voted on Thursday, June 11 to recommend denying Drox Group's rezoning request for the $3 billion, 129-acre project, with staff citing potential significant offsite impacts to nearby residents. · source - 2026-06-23vote
The Rural Hall Town Council voted to withdraw its opposition and back the project after Mayor Terry Bennett said the developer made a written promise that, if the county approved rezoning, the town could annex the site and collect tax revenue; the resolution carries no legal weight in the county process. · source - 2026-07-28news
Forsyth County Planning Board recommended denial, citing scale and intensity that 'could result in significant offsite impacts to nearby residents.' Rural Hall town officials reversed their opposition after a tax-revenue annexation offer. · source - 2026-07-30meeting
County commissioners held the public hearing on the rezoning after months of resident opposition; a final decision was pending as of this record. · source - 2026-07-30vote
The Forsyth County Board of Commissioners voted 5-2 to deny the rezoning request for Project Iron Spur, with only Don Martin and Gloria Whisenhunt voting in support, following six months of review, over 400 emails, and dozens of public speakers. · source
Find the paper trail
Find the paper trail (0 filed · 11 places to look)
State environmental permits
Backup generators, water withdrawal and stormwater are permitted by the state, usually earlier and in more detail than anything filed locally.
- North Carolina DEQ — Division of Air QualityThe program page: which permits this state requires, and the office that issues them.
- Search North Carolina DEQ — Division of Air Quality for this projectsearchThis state publishes no searchable permit database, so a written records request to the agency is the reliable route. Use this search only to find the right office.
County & town filings
The rezoning application, site plan, traffic and noise studies, staff report and every revision.
- Search Rural Hall (Forsyth County) planning filingssearchPlanning departments post application files under many different names. Find the department, then ask the clerk for the application number — that number unlocks everything else.
- Search Rural Hall (Forsyth County) property records / GISsearchThe parcel record names the buying LLC and the sale date, which is what ties an anonymous filing to an operator.
Utility & grid records
The electricity request is filed with the grid operator and the utility long before the town hears about it — and states the real load.
- PJM Interconnection (Mid-Atlantic, Ohio Valley) — interconnection queueRequested megawatts, queue position and target in-service date. The MW here is the real number; the one at the town meeting is often phase one.
- North Carolina Utilities Commission — docket searchSpecial contracts, large-load tariffs and rate cases are docketed here. Testimony and exhibits are public, and are usually more candid than the press release.
- FERC eLibraryFederal filings: transmission agreements, interconnection service agreements, and co-location disputes.
- Search the serving utility for a will-serve lettersearchThe will-serve or load-service letter is the utility's own written commitment. Ask the utility and the PUC for it by name — it is frequently the first document to exist.
Federal databases
Works anywhere, and covers the operator's record at its other sites.
- EPA ECHO facility searchEvery federally-reported air, water and waste permit at a facility, plus its inspection and violation history. Search by address or draw a radius around the site. This project's locality centres on 36.240, -80.290 — search that point with a 5-mile radius.
- EPA EnvirofactsThe same underlying records, queryable by county — useful for 'what else is permitted near this site' rather than one facility.
- EPA Facility Registry ServiceResolves the shell LLC on a permit to the facility it belongs to. Worth a look when the filing name means nothing locally.
These are places to look, not evidence that anything has been filed. Links were checked on 2026-08-21; search links are queries, not records. What to ask for.
Around here
- North Carolina briefing — rates, grid carbon, PUC contacts.
Other tracked projects in North Carolina
- Project Delta — Walnut Cove (Stokes County), 9 mi In review
- Terra Nexus data center campus (316 Old Cheraw Highway) — Rockingham (Richmond County), 94 mi In review
- Southeast Raleigh Data Center — Raleigh, 98 mi Withdrawn
- CoreWeave Marble NC — Marble (Cherokee County), 219 mi In review
- Drox Group Rural Hall — Rural Hall (Forsyth County) Denied
Cite this page: GridWatch AI, “Project Iron Spur”, aigridwatch.com/projects/project-iron-spur-rural-hall-nc, retrieved 2026-10-11.
As of August 2026 (2m ago) · changes weekly — re-check before citing
A working set of identified proposals a community can track, not a census — most of the country's activity is not in here yet. Pennsylvania is the exception: its rows are synced from PA DEP's own data-center permit tracker, so the state's coverage is close to complete and carries the permit trail with it. **Each row carries its own provenance.** Rows showing a verification date link to reporting or the governing body's own record and were read on that date; rows marked *unverified* have no source on record — a lead to check, not a fact to cite. **Stage is derived, not asserted.** *Hearing scheduled*, *Awaiting decision*, *Approved* and *Withdrawn* are computed from each row's milestone dates on every rebuild, so a hearing date that has passed stops reading 'scheduled'. Hearings get moved and projects re-file under new names — treat a scheduled date as the earliest to act by, and confirm with the clerk before relying on it. Leads are mined into data/project_candidates.json and promoted here only after a human reads a primary source.
Part of the data center project tracker — open data, CC BY 4.0 (JSON · CSV).