Far from the roaring speedways, NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt was an outdoorsman who liked to hunt and fish. There was plenty of space to do both on his sprawling land near Mooresville, North Carolina, a quiet town 30 miles north of Charlotte.
Now that land is at the center of a battle over the future of Mooresville that has galvanized residents and pitted Earnhardt’s widow, who wants to develop the property into an enormous data center, against one of Earnhardt’s children, who has joined the fight to stop her.
The proposed $30 billion Mooresville Technology Park would stretch across 400 undeveloped acres, adding several new buildings and an electrical substation. Teresa Earnhardt, Dale Earnhardt’s widow, is seeking approval from the Mooresville Board of Commissioners to rezone his onetime sanctuary as industrial land. Tract, a Denver-based company that builds data centers and leases them to technology companies, has proposed constructing a new campus on that site.
Kerry Earnhardt, Dale Earnhardt’s eldest son, is part of a growing group of residents urging the board to vote “no.”
“My Dad would be livid for his name to be associated” with the project, Kerry Earnhardt posted on Facebook last week, ahead of a community meeting that drew hundreds of people. “Infrastructures like this don’t belong in neighborhoods where people’s natural resources will be depleted, wildlife will be uprooted, and the landscape and lives of the people that call this area home will forever be changed.”
