Sutton is not backing away from the proposed $16 billion data center campus, Town Manager Austin Cyganiewicz said Friday, after the town drew strong objections over the project’s scale and its possible effects on local resources. The Town will keep evaluating the proposal, with any move forward still depending on zoning changes and a Town Meeting vote.
Austin Cyganiewicz memo
The controversy started Monday, when Cyganiewicz sent a memo to Sutton’s five-member Select Board outlining a proposal from the Kraft Group and its Unified Global Packaging Group business. The rough plan calls for a campus with 10 buildings on land owned by Unified Packaging about 10 miles south of Worcester and would require up to 900 megawatts of electricity.
On Tuesday night, more than 100 residents attended a board meeting to raise concerns about electricity use, water use, noise pollution and other potential problems. Those objections did not stop the town from publicly stating on Friday that it remains in the review process.
Kraft Group proposal
The Kraft Group said Thursday night that the project would bring meaningful long-term economic investment to Sutton and would move forward only if the community and the Town of Sutton want it. The company’s proposal is being discussed in a town that does not have a zoning bylaw for data centers, so the Select Board, Zoning Board and Town Meeting would have to draft and approve zoning language before any project could advance.
That approval would require a two-thirds majority at Town Meeting, and Cyganiewicz said the Town Meeting would likely take place in May, 2027. Until then, town officials, Unified and the Kraft Group will try to address residents’ concerns over water and power usage as well as environmental or health risks.
The town’s position leaves the proposal alive, but not simple: the project can keep moving through review only if Sutton writes the rules for it first, and those rules will have to clear a supermajority of voters in The Town. For residents, the practical next step is to watch whether local boards can shape zoning language that limits the project enough to make it acceptable.
