Teresa Overcash, Broker-in-Charge of Realty ONE Group Results and an NCREC Licensed Instructor, has been briefing buyers and sellers around Gateway Research Park and Piedmont Parkway on the moratorium since it moved in council.
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What the Council Actually Did
On Tuesday, August 18, 2026, Greensboro City Council voted 8–0, with one recusal, to establish a 180-day moratorium on data centers exceeding 10 megawatts of electrical demand. It runs through February 14, 2027. The pause temporarily stops the city from accepting, processing, or approving development applications for facilities above that threshold. Council will use the window to study impacts, define “data center” in the Land Development Ordinance, and hold public work sessions with subject-matter experts.
Extended from 120
Above, Not Below
Sunsets
One Recusal
The sequence tells you how live this is
This didn’t sail through. Council rejected a moratorium 5–4 in July, reversed itself weeks later and voted unanimously to craft a 120-day version, then extended it to 180 days after two days of public hearings. Residents packed the chamber holding signs reading “32” — the number of months many of them wanted instead.
Read that sequence carefully if you own property here. The council’s position moved twice in six weeks under public pressure, which means the ordinance that emerges in February is genuinely unsettled. Anyone who tells you they know what the rules will look like is guessing.
Existing projects are not affected
Projects already permitted or under construction proceed under their prior approvals. Future projects will be subject to whatever the city adopts next.
Jurisdiction: A City Action Stops at the City Line
This is the single most misunderstood thing about the moratorium, and it costs deals. Buyers hear “Greensboro” and think “Guilford County.” Those are not the same thing, and the difference is decisive.
| City of Greensboro | High Point, Jamestown & Unincorporated Guilford | |
|---|---|---|
| Moratorium status | Active — 180-day pause through Feb 14, 2027 | None in effect |
| What’s paused | New applications for facilities above 10 MW | Nothing — projects proceed under existing zoning |
| Notable project | Dream Center, Gateway Research Park — status contested (see below) | DC BLOX, 4131 Sheraton Court, High Point — an 18 MW site in Piedmont Centre |
| Existing small facilities | Several operating below 10 MW, unaffected | Unaffected |
| What it means for you | A known, temporary pause on new large applications | No pause — but also no new large approvals pending as of this writing |
Why this matters at the closing table
A buyer under contract in High Point who reads a Greensboro headline may believe they’re protected by a moratorium that has no force where they’re buying. A Greensboro buyer may believe the pause is permanent. Both are wrong, and both misunderstandings surface late — usually the week before closing, when there’s no time left to work through it calmly.
The one-sentence version to give a client: Greensboro paused new applications above 10 megawatts for six months while it writes rules. That pause applies inside Greensboro city limits only, it doesn’t touch anything already permitted, and it doesn’t apply to High Point or the county.
— Teresa Overcash, Broker-in-Charge, Realty ONE Group Results
The Dream Center Question Is Not Settled
You will read that the Dream Center at Gateway Research Park is permitted and cleanly exempt from the moratorium. As of this writing, that is not what the public record shows.
A previous council approved more than $530,000 in incentives for the project in 2022. That plan contemplated a 65,000-square-foot facility using 9 megawatts of power, 28 jobs, and $108.5 million of investment by 2026. What has surfaced since: the city attorney told council that the approved plan expired last year. Construction was supposed to have begun this year and has not started. And the council member who recused herself from the moratorium vote — Mayor Pro Tem Denise Roth — has stated publicly that the relationship between these policy actions and the Dream Center is not as clear-cut as previously understood.
Why we’re saying this plainly
Figures circulating that describe the Dream Center as a 20 MW facility scaling beyond 100 MW do not match the 9 MW in the approved incentive record. Whether the project is exempt, what size it would be, and whether it proceeds at all are open questions. An agent who tells a buyer this is settled is making a promise the record does not support.
Four Buyer Questions, Four Honest Answers
In East Greensboro and the neighborhoods around Piedmont Parkway, data centers now come up in buyer conversations ahead of schools and commute times. Reassurance doesn’t work here. Facts do.
| The Concern | What’s Actually True | How to Answer It |
|---|---|---|
| Noise | Air-cooled facilities generate a persistent low-frequency hum; direct-to-chip liquid cooling is materially quieter. | Ask which cooling technology the facility uses. Commission an independent sound reading if it matters to the buyer. |
| Water use | Varies enormously by design. Evaporative cooling consumes far more water than closed-loop or air-cooled systems. | Pull the water-use figures from the filed site plan. It’s a public document. |
| Power reliability | Utilities frequently harden the circuits serving mission-critical loads, which can improve local reliability. | A defensible point — but don’t oversell it. Confirm with the utility rather than asserting it. |
| Substations and easements | Large sites drive new substation capacity, transmission easements, and vegetation clearing. | This is the real one. See below. |
The sleeper risk is not the building
The thing most likely to actually change a homeowner’s experience is not the data center. It is the Duke Energy substation and transmission work that follows it. Those projects bring easements, access roads, and aggressive vegetation removal — and clearing a treeline permanently changes a backyard view in a way no cooling technology offsets.
This almost never comes up in a listing conversation, and it should. Research utility easements and any filed transmission plans near the property, and disclose what you find. A buyer who learns it from you at the offer stage negotiates. A buyer who learns it from a survey during due diligence terminates.
Distance and Value: What Proximity Is Actually Worth
You will find confident percentage figures circulating about how much value a data center strips from a nearby home. Be careful with them. There is no credible local paired-sales study for this market yet, and quoting a number you can’t defend is worse than admitting the number doesn’t exist.
| Distance | What Typically Matters | What to Do About It |
|---|---|---|
| Direct sight line, under ~1,000 ft | Visibility, audibility, strongest buyer reaction | Independent sound reading; appraisal-support packet with recent comparable sales at similar proximity |
| Partial buffer, ~1,000 ft to half a mile | Perception more than measurable impact — treeline and topography matter | One-page fact sheet on cooling technology, setbacks, and screening |
| Mature buffer, half a mile to a mile | Rarely surfaces unless the buyer arrives already worried | Answer factually if asked; don’t raise it unprompted |
| Beyond a mile | Not a practical factor | Nothing |
If You’re Selling: The Window Between Now and February
Sellers near Gateway Research Park, Piedmont Centre, or any industrial-zoned boundary have a defined stretch of known conditions. Use it deliberately.
Two documents worth preparing
- A site-status handout. One page: distance from the property to the nearest permitted or proposed facility, that facility’s current status, its cooling technology if known, and the moratorium’s terms and end date. Hand it to every buyer at the showing.
- A factual disclosure paragraph. A short, neutral statement about nearby infrastructure, included with the listing materials. It eliminates the surprise factor — and the surprise factor is what produces lowball counters and late terminations.
What the next six months should look like
| Phase | What to Expect |
|---|---|
| Late summer into fall | Staff review of water, power, and noise impacts. Council work sessions with outside experts, open to the public. |
| Fall into winter | Drafting of Land Development Ordinance language, including a formal definition of “data center.” |
| Winter | Public hearings and council readings on the proposed amendments. |
| By February 14, 2027 | Adoption of new rules; the moratorium sunsets and applications resume under whatever framework passes. |
You are selling under known rules. After February, whoever comes next sells under rules nobody has read yet.
— Teresa Overcash, Broker-in-Charge, Realty ONE Group Results
This Is Not Just a Greensboro Story
Communities across the Piedmont are working through the same question at the same time, and they are landing in different places. Randolph County adjusted its existing data center ordinance rather than pausing. Other counties in the region have been weighing moratoriums of their own.
The constraint every one of them faces
North Carolina law does not permit a local government to ban a lawful land use outright. Council members have said so repeatedly and publicly. What local governments can do is regulate — setbacks, noise limits, screening, water use, thresholds by wattage.
Which means the honest long-run answer for a client is this: data centers and the substations that serve them are going to be part of this region. The question being decided right now is not whether, but where, how large, how loud, and how far from a bedroom window.
The briefing standard
For any property near an industrial corridor, three things belong in the file before a showing:
- Status of the nearest facility — operational, permitted, proposed, or expired. Verify it with the planning department; don’t take it from a news article.
- Utility filings for planned substation capacity, transmission easements, or vegetation removal near the parcel.
- Boundary zoning — whether the property shares a line with a district that permits data centers under current or pending ordinance language.
Send us the address. We’ll tell you what’s actually near it.
Buying, selling, or just unsettled by a headline — we’ll map the nearest permitted and proposed facilities against your parcel, pull the utility filings, and give you a straight read on whether it changes anything. Often it doesn’t. When it does, you want to know before the appraisal, not after.
Current as of August 2026 and describing a policy process actively underway. The moratorium was adopted by Greensboro City Council on August 18, 2026 and runs through February 14, 2027; the ordinance that follows it has not been written. Project statuses, megawatt figures, and municipal boundaries should be verified with the relevant planning department before being relied upon in a transaction. No percentage estimate of value impact is offered here because no credible local paired-sales study currently supports one. General information only — not legal, appraisal, engineering, or investment advice. Information deemed reliable but not guaranteed. © 2026 Teresa Overcash · Equal Housing Opportunity.