Panattoni Data Center "Project Bluegrass", Harrodsburg/Burgin, Kentucky

Panattoni Data Centers, a California-based developer, has proposed a data center campus called Project Bluegrass on roughly 900 acres of farmland northwest of Burgin, near Harrodsburg/Burgin in Mercer County, Kentucky. As of a September 8 meeting, the land had not yet been annexed into Burgin and no formal data-center plan had been submitted to the city. That meeting ended when council member Melinda Wofford walked out, breaking quorum before a vote on drafting a new annexation ordinance.

Mercer County's Fiscal Court passed a one-year pause on new data-center applications in unincorporated areas on August 11, 2026, which covers the Project Bluegrass site while it stays outside city limits; annexation into Burgin would move it outside that pause. Burgin gave an initial reading on September 17 to an agreement rejoining the Harrodsburg-Mercer County planning and zoning commission, but has not finalized it. Panattoni has said the project would bring more than 1,500 construction jobs and about 100 permanent jobs, while residents have raised concerns about water, electricity and noise.

The county had scheduled a second reading of an ordinance creating a data-center zoning district for September 28, 2026, at a meeting at the Campbellsville University-Harrodsburg gym; no result of that vote has been published yet.