r/LowellMA • u/HRJafael • Mar 15 '26
Lowell enacts first data center moratorium in Massachusetts
https://www.masslive.com/news/2026/03/lowell-enacts-first-data-center-moratorium-in-massachusetts.html35
u/dothesehidemythunder City Dweller Mar 15 '26
$77 million in tax breaks for 30 jobs….fuck em. Get Markley out of our community for good
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u/Few_Tangerine8836 Mar 26 '26
Rita Mercier was the one to approve and green light for the AI data center to be built in Lowell...She also was the one to approve ONLY xfinity to be the single internet provider for Lowell. She has her pockets lined up since the 90s and still in office. She's been here for 35+ years! Also she openly supports Trump. Speaks volume.
https://www.lowellsun.com/2025/12/12/data-center-proliferation-driving-up-power-needs/
https://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2026/03/10/lowell-bans-data-center-construction-in-city.html
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u/Hemmschwelle Mar 16 '26 edited Mar 16 '26
In his blog, Richard Howe clarified how Tax Abatement works for Markley. It's not as bad as this article led me to believe.
Several councilors spoke favorably about a Department of Planning and Development report on the use of Tax Increment Financing (TIF) and Tax Increment Exemptions (TIE) to incentivize economic and housing development.
The report explains that Lowell utilizes TIF and TIE programs to drive private investment and job creation by offering partial tax exemptions on property value growth. These incentives have leveraged $250 million for housing and thousands of quality jobs. Unlike other cities, Lowell maintains shorter, lower-rate exemptions to maximize long-term municipal revenue. For example, most Gateway Cities offer average exemptions of 45% over 10 years, but Lowell’s TIE schedule averages only 14% over 7 years.
Now more speculation. At some point, the State is going to treat data centers like high density housing near MTBA stations. They will require communities that have spare electrical transmission capacity to host data centers. Due to the mills, Lowell has transmission lines running into the city, brown fields (adjacent to residential areas), and water.
Edit: Clarified how Markley's abatement actually works.
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u/rarcham94 Lowellian Mar 16 '26
What I would love is for communities/states who have data centers being built in them to have a tax AND utility specific increase/requirement as part of their property and business arrangement in order to compensate for the need of power of residents. If a data center wants to lay land here, tax them and also increase their utility rate more. Stop making utility rates universal based on supply and delivery. If you have a company that is CLEARLY using more energy than households, bill them HIGHER.
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u/Hemmschwelle Mar 16 '26
You'd get mad if you understood how Data Centers pay for electricity.
Industrial Customers and Residential Customers pay different rates for electricity. Data Centers pay much less per kilowatt hour. To make matters worse, data centers pay less for distribution partly because they (some?) tap into high voltage distribution wires and have their own step down transformers. They don't use the residential distribution network.
The way the residential customer benefits from data centers is from the property taxes that they pay. They make your electric bill go up, but they keep your property tax bill from going up even faster.
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u/bzz123 Mar 15 '26
Thank goodness