CASE STUDY: MECKLENBURG COUNTY Boydton, South Hill, and What Fifteen Years of Data Centers Actually Bought

Every other report in this series documents a Virginia county deciding on promises. Mecklenburg County is the only jurisdiction in the commonwealth where the promises are old enough to audit. Microsoft announced its Boydton data center on August 27, 2010, with a pledge of up to $499 million and 50 jobs. Fifteen years later the company owns eleven of the county's twelve data center sites across roughly 3,762 acres, has announced just under $2 billion in investment through public statements that stopped in 2019, and employs, together with its vendors, about 700 people in a county of 30,000. This case study assembles the fifteen-year actual: the year-by-year fiscal record, the employment ledger, the community…