Rural Hall Data Center: Why Forsyth County Rejected Project Iron Spur

Rural Hall Town Hall sits on Bethania-Rural Hall Road. Across the street is farmland. Open fields, some tree stands, two ponds, four houses, and a creek called Beaver Dam that runs through the middle of it.

On July 30, Forsyth County commissioners voted on whether that land should become a hyperscale data center.

They said no. The vote was 5 to 2.¹

Here is what was actually on the table, according to the county's own case file, and why the fight is almost certainly not over.

What was proposed

The project was called Project Iron Spur. In county records it is rezoning case F-1669.²

The applicant was The Drox Group LLC, a Charlotte company. The petitioners were the landowners themselves: Jennifer Jobe, James Martin Serber III, James Martin Serber Jr., Julia Wall, and Wall Family of North Carolina LLC. The site plan was drawn by Thomas & Hutton, an engineering firm in Savannah, Georgia, with building elevations by the architecture firm HKS.²

The request was to rezone 128.54 acres from residential and general industrial to Limited Industrial-Special Use.²

From the staff report, here is the scale:²

• Three buildings. Each with a 187,050 square foot footprint and two floors, for 374,100 square feet apiece.
• 1,122,300 square feet total. Roughly 26 acres of building.
• 80 to 84 feet tall. Rooflines around 68 feet, parapets around 76 feet, and louvered rooftop equipment enclosures on top of that.
• 135 ground-mounted equipment units across the site, screened behind enclosure panels 34 feet high.
• A separate 3.7-acre electrical substation on a parcel just north of the site.

That last item matters. The staff report notes the substation parcel already permits utilities by right through an administrative zoning permit, meaning it was not part of the rezoning question.²

The site was chosen for a reason that is visible on the plans. A 150-foot-wide Duke Energy easement already runs north to south straight through the middle of the property. An existing 230kV substation sits immediately to the north.² Planning Director Chris Murphy told FOX8 in March that the land was attractive for its proximity to water and high power sources, and described the project as the county's first entry into a modern data center handling high-capacity computing and AI work.³

The two numbers nobody ever saw

Here is the most striking thing in a 130-page public file.

There is no megawatt figure. There is no water consumption figure.

The staff report acknowledges the issue directly, stating that hyperscale data centers are known to use significant amounts of electricity and water, and that staff recognizes ongoing public concerns about utility demand and infrastructure capacity. It then moves on. The site plan carries a note that electrical distribution and transmission routing is to be determined and confirmed by the local electrical utility and the end user.²

Six months of hearings, more than 400 emails to commissioners, and dozens of public speakers,⁴ and the two figures residents asked about most were never entered into the public record.^{1 5}

What the file does contain on utilities: the project would have been required to use public water and public sewer, with no wells or septic except for irrigation, and open-loop cooling systems would have been prohibited outright. An open-loop system, as the condition defines it, draws water from a source, passes it once over a heat exchanger, and discharges it without recirculating. Banning it implies a closed-loop design, which generally uses far less water. How much less was never quantified in the file.²

The reversal

The politics here are worth following in order.

April. The Rural Hall Town Council adopted Resolution 901, opposing the project.⁶

June 11. The Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Planning Board voted 7-2 to recommend denial.²

June 22. The town council reversed itself, adopting Resolution 912 to replace Resolution 901 and express support.⁶ FOX8 reported that Mayor Terry Bennett told a packed room the reversal would help protect the town, because Drox Group had offered to apply for annexation, which would bring the site inside Rural Hall and let the town collect the tax revenue. Councilman Michael Woodcock cast the only no vote.⁷

July 30. Forsyth County commissioners denied the rezoning anyway. WFDD reported the vote came after six months, more than 400 emails and dozens of speakers, with Don Martin and Gloria Whisenhunt the only votes in support.¹

The land sits outside town limits, so Rural Hall never had a vote. Forsyth County always held the decision.

What the county staff actually concluded

The staff report, prepared by planner Rory Howard, recommended denial. Its reasoning was not primarily about noise or water. It was about the plan on the books.²

The site falls under the Rural Hall Area Plan Update, adopted in 2016. That plan recommends mixed-use development for this property, meaning a combination of residential, commercial, office and recreational uses. It also states that new industrial uses should be located near existing industrial or business parks, and that neighborhoods should be protected from inappropriate industrial encroachment.⁸

Staff concluded the request was not in conformance with Forward 2045, the county's comprehensive plan, and was inconsistent with the purpose statement of the zoning district being requested.⁹ The report notes the site is adjacent to the Rural Hall Downtown Activity Center, and that an industrial campus would limit future integration between the two.²

There is also a zoning quirk worth knowing. The county's development ordinance has no category for "data center." The use falls under Services A, alongside personal and business services, a classification the staff report says was envisioned for a much smaller scale.¹⁰ Staff themselves recommended the Limited Industrial-Special Use district to the applicant, specifically to force buffering requirements and acknowledge the industrial nature of the use.²

Staff's stated concerns were operational noise, the visual impact of 80-foot buildings next to houses, and utility demand. The report also ties those impacts to Forward 2045's environmental justice recommendations.²

What the developer offered

The staff report credits the applicant for working with planning staff, and the list of volunteered conditions is long:²

• A pre-construction sound study by a licensed acoustic engineer, plus permanent continuous noise monitors on the east, west and south property lines
• A hard cap of 60 dBA at the perimeter property line
• Generator testing limited to 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., Monday through Saturday
• All mechanical equipment, cooling systems, transformers and generators oriented toward the interior of the site
• Dark-sky compliant lighting, with fixtures within 100 feet of homes capped at 12 feet tall
• A 40-foot Type III bufferyard along the western, southern and eastern property lines
• Roughly 35 acres preserved as natural buffer, plus a potential public recreation area
• Eight-foot decorative anti-climb fencing instead of chain link where visible
• An abandonment clause requiring removal of hardware, power infrastructure and hazardous chemicals within two years if the data center ceased operating for 12 months

There is also a traffic finding that cuts against intuition. Under existing residential zoning, the staff report calculates the site could hold 278 single-family homes generating 2,660 vehicle trips per day. The data center was projected at 1,111 trips per day. No traffic impact analysis was required.²

Staff's conclusion was that the conditions had value, and that the scale and intensity still presented the potential for significant off-site impacts.²

Why this is round one, not the end

Three things in the record suggest this comes back.

The commissioners left the door open. WFDD reported that commissioners made clear they are not anti-data center, and need to determine where such sites would be appropriate. Commissioner Gray Wilson said he did not think the board should force something on everybody.¹

The developer said so. A spokesperson for Drox Group told FOX8 after the vote that the team is going back to the drawing board.¹¹

The county has approved something similar already. The staff report's own zoning history section lists case F-1638, a rezoning from residential to Limited Industrial-Special Use covering 140.40 acres southwest of the Iron Spur site. Staff recommended approval, the planning board recommended approval, and it was approved on March 13, 2025. That tract is larger than the one just denied.²

Meanwhile, Greater Winston-Salem Inc. president and CEO Mark Owens told the Winston-Salem Journal that data center developers have been looking throughout Forsyth County.¹²

And the region is already split on the question. In neighboring Stokes County, commissioners voted 3-2 on Jan. 12 to rezone land in Walnut Cove for a data center, over opposition from adjoining landowners, the county historical society and local clergy.¹³ Greensboro council members have been discussing data centers publicly since early May.¹⁴

What to watch

The Rural Hall decision turned on a 2016 area plan that recommends mixed use for one specific tract. That is a narrow basis. It does not answer where in Forsyth County a facility like this would be appropriate, and the county has not adopted a data center policy or a text amendment creating a use category for them.

Until it does, the question comes back one rezoning case at a time.

FAQ

What is Project Iron Spur in Rural Hall?

Project Iron Spur (rezoning case F-1669) was a proposed hyperscale data center in Rural Hall, Forsyth County, from The Drox Group LLC — three buildings around 80 feet tall totaling about 1.12 million square feet on 128.54 acres of farmland across from Rural Hall Town Hall.

Did Forsyth County approve the Rural Hall data center?

No. On July 30, 2026, Forsyth County commissioners voted 5-2 to deny the rezoning request for the data center.

Why was the Rural Hall data center rejected?

County staff recommended denial primarily because the project conflicted with the 2016 Rural Hall Area Plan, which recommends mixed-use development for the site, and with the Forward 2045 comprehensive plan. Cited concerns included operational noise, the visual impact of 80-foot buildings next to homes, and utility demand.

How much water and electricity would the data center have used?

The public case file never included a megawatt figure or a water-consumption figure. The project would have been required to use public water and sewer and was barred from open-loop cooling (implying a lower-water closed-loop design), but no actual quantities were entered into the record.

Where would the Rural Hall data center have been built?

On 128.54 acres of farmland on Bethania-Rural Hall Road, directly across from Rural Hall Town Hall, along an existing 150-foot-wide Duke Energy easement next to a 230kV substation.

Is the Rural Hall data center proposal dead?

Not necessarily. Commissioners said they are not anti-data center and need to determine where such sites are appropriate, the developer said it is going back to the drawing board, and the county has not adopted a data center zoning policy — so a proposal can return one rezoning case at a time.

Footnotes

1. 88.5 WFDD — "Forsyth Commission votes down Rural Hall data center proposal" (July 30, 2026). The 5-2 vote, the six-month timeline, 400-plus emails and dozens of speakers, the Martin and Whisenhunt yes votes, and commissioners' "not anti-data center" comments including Gray Wilson. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

2. Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Planning Board — Draft Staff Report, Docket F-1669 (June 2026), prepared by Rory Howard, including the site layout exhibit and building elevations prepared by Thomas & Hutton and HKS for The Drox Group LLC (cityofws.org DocumentCenter, View 43027). Case number, applicant and petitioners, the 128.54-acre rezoning request, building scale and dimensions, the substation parcel, the Duke Energy easement and 230kV substation, the missing megawatt/water figures, the planning board's 7-2 denial recommendation, the staff denial rationale, the volunteered conditions, the trip-generation comparison, and the F-1638 zoning history. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷

3. FOX8 WGHP — "Proposal for large data center in Forsyth County headed to planning board" (March 2026). Planning Director Chris Murphy on the site's water and power proximity and the county's first modern data center. ↩

4. 88.5 WFDD — "Proposed Rural Hall data center up for public hearing Thursday" (July 28, 2026). ↩

5. 88.5 WFDD — "Residents are pushing back on proposed Rural Hall data center, commissioners say" (March 17, 2026). Resident concerns over utility demand. ↩

6. Rural Hall Town Council — Resolution 901 (opposition) and Resolution 912 (support, replacing 901). ↩ ↩²

7. FOX8 WGHP — "Rural Hall town leaders reverse course on data center, pass resolution in support" (June 2026). Mayor Terry Bennett on annexation and tax revenue, and Councilman Michael Woodcock's no vote. ↩

8. Rural Hall Area Plan Update (2016). Mixed-use recommendation for the site and guidance on locating new industrial uses and protecting neighborhoods from industrial encroachment. ↩

9. Forward 2045 — Winston-Salem/Forsyth County comprehensive plan. Conformance findings and environmental justice recommendations referenced in the staff report. ↩

10. Forsyth County Unified Development Ordinances, Section 4.7.1 and Chapter 6. The absence of a "data center" use category and its classification under Services A. ↩

11. FOX8 WGHP — "Forsyth County commissioners reject rezoning request for hyperscale data center Project Iron Spur" (July 30, 2026). The denial and Drox Group's "going back to the drawing board" statement. ↩

12. Winston-Salem Journal — "Data centers show interest in Winston-Salem, Forsyth" (March 2026). Greater Winston-Salem Inc. CEO Mark Owens on developer interest across Forsyth County. ↩

13. Winston-Salem Journal — coverage of the Stokes County Commissioners meeting and Walnut Cove rezoning vote (Jan. 12, 2026). The 3-2 approval over local opposition. ↩

14. Yes! Weekly — "Triad debates data centers" (July 2026). Greensboro council discussion of data centers. ↩