What was supposed to be a quiet preliminary planning conversation has turned into one of the most contentious local land use fights New Hampshire has seen this year. A proposal to build a data center in the small Rockingham County town of Nottingham has drawn nearly 15,000 petition signatures in opposition, prompted a protest outside town hall, and attracted statewide attention, all before the developer has formally presented a single plan to local officials.
According to NHPR, the Nottingham Planning Board moved its regular meeting on Wednesday evening from town hall to the larger Nottingham School to accommodate the expected crowd. The meeting, scheduled for 6:30 p.m., features only a “conceptual consultation” as its first agenda item, a preliminary and non-binding discussion about the project idea. Yet the opposition that has already formed around it signals that any formal application process will be a significant fight.
The Proposal: A Data Center Off Route 4
Seacoast entrepreneur Thomas Moulton is proposing to build a large data center at the Nottingham Business Park, located on Old Turnpike Road off Route 4 in the town. The property encompasses 100-plus acres. Moulton submitted an application for a conceptual consultation to the planning board, case number 26-009, for the entity identified as PCC Nottingham Business Park, LLC.
Nottingham sits roughly 30 minutes from both Concord and Portsmouth, placing it in a geographic zone that development interests often find attractive: close enough to major population centers and transportation infrastructure, yet still in a town where land is more available and property values remain lower than in the Seacoast’s most urbanized communities.
The specific land involved has a history of controversial development proposals. The Nottingham Business Park site was previously proposed as the location for a USA Springs water bottling operation in the early 2000s, a project that drew intense local opposition over water withdrawal concerns and ultimately never came to fruition. The fact that this same parcel is now being proposed for a data center, another type of facility known for significant resource consumption, has added an extra layer of frustration for longtime residents.
What Data Centers Demand: Power, Water, and Concerns
Opponents have focused primarily on the resource demands that large-scale data centers impose on the communities that host them. Modern data centers require enormous amounts of electricity to run servers and computing equipment, and equally large amounts of water or air conditioning infrastructure to keep that equipment from overheating. A facility of meaningful scale can consume as much electricity as a small city.
New Hampshire has been grappling with this tradeoff at the state legislative level throughout 2026. The NH House in May voted 304-11 to table a bill that would have allowed data centers to be built “by right” in any industrial zone, stripping towns of their ability to impose special zoning requirements. That decisive vote reflected broad bipartisan concern among legislators about the impact of large-scale data center development on local communities and the state’s power grid.
The background to that vote, and to the local Nottingham controversy, is a broader national and statewide surge in demand for data center capacity driven by the explosive growth of artificial intelligence and cloud computing. Technology companies are actively scouting New England locations for new facilities, and New Hampshire’s relatively lower land costs, existing infrastructure, and proximity to Boston have made it a target. Towns like Nottingham are finding themselves at the intersection of those commercial pressures and community concerns about what that development means for their quality of life, property taxes, and natural resources.
The Developer’s Perspective
Thomas Moulton says the controversy that erupted around his proposal has outpaced his ability to actually explain what he has in mind. He told NHPR that he has not yet had a chance to share the potential benefits the project could bring to Nottingham, including what he described as significant increases in local tax revenue.
“I haven’t even had my voice heard yet, and everybody is coming out of the woodwork, and they want to lynch me,” Moulton said. “It’s like, ‘Come on people, relax.’”
Moulton emphasized that the data center concept is still in its earliest stages. What is happening on Wednesday night is not a public hearing with formal testimony and decision-making, but rather an informal conversation with the planning board about whether the concept is worth developing into an actual application. The board has no authority to approve or reject the project at this stage.
That distinction matters legally, but it has done little to cool the public reaction. Online forums, community social media groups, and the change.org petition platform have all seen intense activity since news of the proposal broke earlier in May.
Nearly 15,000 Signatures and a Planned Protest
The change.org petition opposing the Nottingham data center, started by a resident named Brad Weit, collected 14,747 signatures by 3 p.m. Monday, May 25. The petition calls on residents and supporters statewide to stop the project before it advances further through the permitting process.
The Nottingham Substack newsletter, which covers local government news in the community, reported that organizers are planning a large protest outside the planning board meeting Wednesday evening. The town has acknowledged awareness of the planned demonstration.
Ellen White, Nottingham’s town administrator, told NHPR the response has been unlike anything she has seen for a local land use matter.
“It’s been statewide,” White said. “Everything has been in opposition to it.”
That statewide attention is partly a product of the broader political context. After the NH House’s 304-11 vote to table the data center zoning bill and months of legislative debate about data centers and local control, residents across New Hampshire have been primed to pay attention when a project like Moulton’s surfaces in a small town. Previous data center legislation, including proposals that would have restricted municipalities from enacting data-center-specific regulations, generated significant controversy at the State House. The Nottingham proposal has arrived in that charged atmosphere.
What Happens Next in the Process
Wednesday evening’s conceptual consultation is a preliminary step under Nottingham’s planning board procedures. It allows a developer to present a concept informally and receive initial feedback before committing to a full site plan application, with all the engineering studies, traffic analyses, and environmental assessments that process requires.
The planning board is expected to ask questions and offer general comments. Town residents will have an opportunity to address the board during a public comment period near the end of the meeting, but those comments will be advisory rather than part of any formal record for a permitting decision.
If Moulton proceeds with a formal application, the project would go through a complete site plan review process, including public hearings, review under Nottingham’s land use ordinances, and potentially review by the Strafford Regional Planning Commission, which provides planning services to Nottingham on a contractual basis. That process could take many months and would give opponents multiple opportunities to formally challenge the proposal.
Nottingham is a small community with an unusually strong environmental identity. According to the Strafford Regional Planning Commission, the town was the first municipality in the United States to institute mandatory recycling. Whether that history translates into successful opposition to the data center, or whether the economic arguments Moulton wants to make will find more traction once they are formally presented, will likely become clearer over the coming weeks.
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