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The Kraft Group and Unified Global Packaging propose 10 buildings in Sutton, Massachusetts, but no application is filed and power, water and site details are still to come.
Chips & Power DeskEdited by Ege Erten
2 min readAI-assisted
The Kraft Group and Unified Global Packaging Group's tentative proposal, per developer estimates in a town manager's memo.
Illustration (AI-generated)
The Kraft Group and Unified Global Packaging Group have proposed a 10-building data center campus in Sutton, Massachusetts, drawing about 900 MW at a developer-estimated $16 billion, the town manager said.
Sutton Town Manager Austin Cyganiewicz laid out the plan in a Monday memo to the Select Board, which was due to meet Tuesday evening, Nov. 10, CBS Boston and The Boston Globe reported. The site is off Boston Road and Providence Road, on land owned by the Krafts' Unified Packaging box business, in a town of about 9,700 people roughly 10 miles south of Worcester.
"The proposal is tentative," Cyganiewicz wrote. "No application has been filed, and important details on power, water, equipment and site impacts are still to come."
The first two buildings would open in 2029, with two more each year through 2033. The town estimates those first two would pay $10.4 million a year in property tax once fully assessed from fiscal 2031, rising to about $27.8 million a year when all 10 are assessed in 2035. The town's entire fiscal 2027 tax levy is $32 million. The memo says the main effect would be lower bills: about $2,300 less for the average single-family home in fiscal 2031 and about $5,800 less in fiscal 2035.
The 900 MW figure is the campus draw at full build-out; the sources do not say whether it is critical IT load or utility interconnection capacity. Spread over 10 buildings, it averages 90 MW each, by our arithmetic. Developers told the town they are in talks with ISO New England, the regional grid operator, about power, and are exploring treated wastewater for cooling, CBS Boston reported. WCVB reported that water use has not been disclosed.
For New England that is a large ask. Cleanview, a research firm cited by the Globe, ranks the finished campus as the fourth-largest data center in the US. The investment would be several times the $2.8 billion assessed value of all property in Sutton today, the memo says.
Approval by the Select Board and other town committees is required before the project can proceed. Governor Maura Healey signed an executive order in September that, as the Globe describes it, blocks new data centers in Massachusetts without local approval; CBS Boston adds that developers must sign community benefit agreements with the host town and supply their own power or pay a fee. The state paused data center tax breaks in June, and the Globe notes that Westfield, in western Massachusetts, moved last month to block a smaller proposal.
Local resistance is hardening elsewhere, as Voltgrid reported on this month's ballot measures and on Sunbury, Ohio's ban on 25 MW data centers.
No application has been filed, and the Kraft Group did not immediately comment to the Globe or CBS Boston. The outcome of the Tuesday Select Board meeting was not yet reported when this was written. Power supply, water source and equipment details, and any tenant, have not been disclosed.
