Data centers in Yadkin County, North Carolina: 1 project mapped

Imagery: Esri, Maxar

On the day in August 2026 that Yadkin County commissioners voted 5-0 for a two-year moratorium on data centers, a data center company announced it was buying 120 acres in Yadkinville that the moratorium does not reach. WhiteFiber, operating through its subsidiary Enovum Data Centers, agreed to pay $60 million for two Unifi industrial properties with about 500,000 square feet of warehouse space. It plans to retrofit them into campuses called NC-2 and NC-3, with at least 60 megawatts of initial capacity, potentially about 200 megawatts over time, and first service targeted for the third quarter of 2027. The sites are about 55 miles from WhiteFiber's NC-1 campus in Madison, in Rockingham County, another former Unifi plant. County Manager Michael Silverman said the moratorium covers only unincorporated areas, not towns. Yadkinville's town manager, Mike Koser, noted that because the Unifi properties are already zoned industrial, there is no zoning hurdle to a data center there.

The moratorium grew from a 12-month proposal to two years on a motion by Commissioner Cliff Collins, after more than an hour of public comment against data centers from more than 20 speakers. They were worried about water for farms, lost farmland, noise and rural character. "My family has been farming since the 1800s," said Janet Robbins. "We need our farmers, and we don't need to use our land for data centers." Ashley Bell, a physician assistant running for the 10th Congressional District, warned about low-frequency hum. One resident, Dean Swaim, argued for a shorter, six-month pause and for taxing data centers to relieve property owners, since "Yadkin County has always gotten the crumbs from the counties around them." Local leaders said they were as surprised by the same-day announcement as anyone. In September WhiteFiber's Madison operations manager, Jonathan Collins, told the Yadkinville Town Board that the company cools with outside air and runs generators only for backup. Residents pressed him on what happens when the technology dates and a retrofitted building is abandoned; "I think this could be a testing ground where we can't stop this," said Worth Shover of Boonville.

Every project above is drawn from public records, filings and local reporting. Each row links to what it is based on. Statuses change, so check the source date before you rely on one. Found something wrong? Write to [email protected] and it gets fixed.