Local residents in Killingly, Connecticut, will vote today on whether to approve the sale of ~39 acres to data center developer NE Edge, LLC.
The land in question is a plot at 125 Alexander Parkway. Should the sale be approved, NE Edge plans to build a hyperscale three-building campus on it and the two adjacent parcels.
The other two properties are located at 145 Alexander Parkway which is a gravel operation and 141 Louisa Viens Drive which is vacant land.
The land has a current assessed value of $106,890 while the purchase and sale agreements list the price at $5 million. If the vote goes through, $100,000 would immediately be placed in escrow, followed by a second payment of the same amount one year later, and another two years later of $50,000. These payments are non-refundable if the sale does not complete, but enable NE Edge to do due diligence on the property.
If all goes to plan and the buildings are completed, the Host Fee Agreement will commence and see the town receive $165 million over the following 30 years.
The data center itself will bring between 80 and 100 long-term high-paying jobs to the area, and between 1,500-2,000 construction jobs. It is being pitched as a "quiet" and sustainable building designed to use clean energy.
All of this, however, is dependent on the data center actually being built, something which NE Edge has so far failed to do.
NE Edge has had a troubling start in the world. The company was founded in December 2021 by Thomas Quinn, former CEO Verde LLC (which also failed to produce any data centers during the course of its existence) and then joint owner of GotSpace Data Partners, another data center development company, with Nicholas Fiorillo.
GotSpace had begun the process of developing data centers across Connecticut, looking at the areas of Groton, Norwich, Griswold, and Bosrah with plans to create the country's largest digital hub. The plans did not go ahead.
In October, Bozrah officially rejected the data center construction proposal by GotSpace after the company failed to attend the planning & zoning commission meeting due to an ongoing change in leadership. In November 2021, Wallingford began to look for ways to prevent the development, citing GotSpace as having ‘internal issues’. It was also around this time that Quinn exited the company.
Quinn has since gone on to found NE Edge, and is pursuing all the same locations that GotSpace had previously applied to. In December 2022, GotSpace sued GotSpace for a massive $30 billion.
NE Edge has thus far been unable to develop data centers in the previously mentioned locations. The company's application to develop in Groton was rejected "with prejudice" in March 2022. In January 2023, the company backed out of discussions with the town of Bozrah.
Shortly after the Bozrah plans were announced by NE Edge, GotSpace added the town to its list of defendants in its lawsuit.
Jeffrey Londregan, a lawyer for the Town of Bozrah told DCD in an email: "The Town does not believe that the lawsuit precludes NE Edge and Bozrah from speaking. The Town would be happy to talk to GotSpace about signing a Host Agreement as well if they were so inclined…because the Agreement in Bozrah is not site-specific. As such, the Town views it as being able to have multiple agreements with anyone who ultimately builds a data center. The Town never saw any Host Agreement as needing to be exclusive to only one potential developer.
Londregan added: "The postponement was a decision made by the Town at the request of NE Edge, LLC. There are no current plans to bring it back around to a vote of the electors of Bozrah at this point in time, as the postponement is presently indefinite."
The defendants were issued a summons on February 9, 2023. As of now, there are no further updates to the lawsuit.
