What do you do when you discover a $4 billion data center has been approved 200 feet from your home?
Jessica Sharp, Organizer with Wilmington Residents for Responsible Development, thought she was entering her stay-at-home-mom era. Instead, she found herself learning zoning laws, uncovering secrecy and NDAs, organizing neighbors, working with experts, hiring a certified planner, responding to shifting state legislation, gathering petition signatures, engaging with the media, and helping build a movement.
“I thought this was my stay-at-home-mom era, until I found out about this data center in my literal backyard.”
Jessica closed on her home the day before zoning for a proposed 4-million-square-foot Amazon Web Services hyperscale data center campus was finalized, without knowing it. What started as concern over one project quickly evolved into a community-wide effort involving multiple data center proposals, legal challenges, referendum campaigns, and larger questions about transparency and public accountability.
Joining Jessica will be Quintin Koger Kidd, a community advocate who has helped analyze the technical and policy dimensions of Wilmington’s proposed projects. Quintin has become a leading local voice on issues including tax incentives, zoning compliance, utility impacts, and the long-term community impacts of large-scale development.
Together they share the story behind Wilmington’s fight and the many unexpected turns along the way.
Resources
Jessica has generously opened up her campaign toolkit to other communities. Her resource folder includes copies of personal testimony, expert reports and testimony, petitions, research, sample ordinances, letters to the editor, organizing materials, planning and zoning resources, tax abatement information, and other documents that communities can adapt and use in their own campaigns.