Developers in New Castle County, Delaware are quietly pivoting two large industrial projects toward potential data center use, signaling more local capacity for AI and cloud compute.
The sites, totaling roughly 3.9 million square feet, are being reworked from logistics and office uses to footprints that make more sense for high-density server farms with minimal parking and staffing.
County zoning currently lets warehouses flip to data centers by right, which makes it easy for GPU-heavy builds to appear quickly without much upfront public scrutiny.
Local politics are now a real risk factor: one council member is pushing tighter rules on siting, buffers, and backup power efficiency, while another is championing data centers for tax base and jobs, backed by construction unions.
Power and grid constraints are already a flashpoint after a separate 580-acre “power hungry” data center sparked backlash in a region facing an electricity supply crunch.
Operationally, the key questions for these projects will be access to reliable megawatt-scale power, water and cooling strategies, and how fast new regulations land in New Castle County.
The piece is worth a read for anyone tracking how local land-use fights and grid limits will shape where the next wave of AI data centers can actually get built.
Source: Two New Castle County industrial projects may become data centers – Spotlight Delaware
