Markley Data Center (Lowell), Lowell, Massachusetts

The building that holds Markley Group's Lowell data center, at 1 Markley Way in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, made pasta for most of the twentieth century. It was the Prince pasta plant from the late 1930s until the mid 1990s, then stood empty for about two decades. Markley Group moved in in 2015 with a $77 million tax incentive package running 20 years, and turned it into 352,000 square feet of data center, the largest in Massachusetts. It occupies 14 acres in the Sacred Heart and Back Central neighbourhoods, with houses immediately alongside.

The fight is about diesel. The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection approved a permit allowing the data center up to eight more diesel generators, bringing its total to 27. One of the diesel stacks stands 84 feet from the home of Jake Fortes. The company says the generators run about five minutes a week for testing. Fortes says the tests run five to 10 minutes a week and send fumes into his home. They also describe constant noise from the generators and cooling fans, chemical smells, and mist from the cooling towers settling on their yards.

The dispute is older than the lawsuit. At a planning board hearing on September 19, 2024, dozens of residents turned out against a proposal to add four generators, nine modular chiller plants and a water treatment plant at 2 Prince Avenue and 1 Markley Way. Nancy Fortes, of Iowa Street, told the board: "They present themselves as neighborhood friendly when actually they've been a public nuisance to me and other residents since their arrival." Board chair Tom Linnehan said earlier conditions had not been met and that unauthorised work had been done, and the board held the case over to October 21 for a site visit. Markley executive vice president Jeff Flanagan told the board the company had committed more than $350 million to the Lowell site, of which more than $225 million was already spent, and that the project had created 47 permanent jobs that would rise to 100 by 2035.

In March 2026 the city council passed a 360 day moratorium on data center construction and expansion, unanimously. On April 26, 2026 a group of residents including Jacob Fortes, whose home is at the fenceline, sued in Massachusetts Superior Court, represented by the Conservation Law Foundation, the Environmental Justice Law and Advocacy Clinic at Yale Law School and Fitch Law Partners. The complaint says the state environment department unlawfully approved an air permit for 27 diesel generators and 16 cooling towers in a residential neighbourhood, dismissed the residents' appeal without letting them present evidence, and allowed Markley to install and run generators before final approval under an undisclosed side agreement. Fortes said at the time: "This is an important step forward in getting the respect our neighborhood has not had for the past 11 years. It didn't have to come to this, but Markley refused to listen to the neighborhood or respect state laws."

Markley challenged the moratorium, and in July 2026 reached an agreement with the city allowing it to go ahead with expansion plans that predated the ban. Residents rallied outside City Hall on Tuesday, July 28, 2026, ten days after a national day of action on July 18 that counted 142 protests across 42 states, and the next day residents in the lawsuit asked a Middlesex County Superior Court judge to step in. "The people of Lowell do not want this data center," said Lowell resident Amada Moundele. Another resident, Sienna Herbert, said the expansion "will essentially make us a corporate town."

On August 10, 2026, Superior Court Judge William Barrett ordered a halt to the installation of four generators that were not yet in place, while letting four already installed continue to operate. Jake Fortes said of the order: "It's finally somebody recognizing that the rules haven't been followed." The data center keeps operating, including the four generators already installed, subject to the permit's special conditions, while the case continues.