RALEIGH — A North Carolina land development company has sued Chatham County, claiming that a recently adopted moratorium on data centers unlawfully blocks a long-planned 750-megawatt project on property zoned for heavy industrial use.
Chatham County’s 12-month moratorium blocks new data centers countywide and specifically designates cryptocurrency mining as a separate land use requiring distinct regulation.
ECO TIP West LLC filed the complaint in Chatham County Superior Court last week, seeking to invalidate the county’s Feb. 11 moratorium on data centers and to affirm that its Triangle Innovation West project is exempt.
The company, which owns the site known as TIP West within the county’s Moncure Megasite, argues it had already secured vested rights through substantial investments and official county approvals before the moratorium took effect.
According to the lawsuit, ECO TIP has spent more than $11 million developing the project, which includes cryptocurrency mining operations alongside traditional data center functions.
The site, near the intersection of Pea Ridge Road and Old U.S. 1, was rezoned for heavy industrial use in 2018 as part of the Moncure Megasite, an area promoted by state and local officials for large-scale manufacturing and technology projects, including proximity to the planned VinFast automobile factory.
Court documents state that in late October 2025, the county issued a zoning permit confirming the data center was a “use permitted by right” once public water and sewer service became available. The company says utilities were in place, giving it statutory protections under North Carolina law.
The moratorium was adopted after community opposition to AI data centers and in what the complaint describes as “closed-door” discussions among county officials.
ECO TIP contends the ordinance was rushed, lacked required legal findings and failed to consider alternatives, rendering it invalid. Even if valid, the company argues, its project qualifies for an exemption because of its preexisting approvals and expenditures.
At the Feb. 11 public hearing and in a follow-up letter, ECO TIP requested recognition of that exemption, but county officials denied the request without detailed analysis and halted processing of the company’s site plan application.
The lawsuit invokes the “expedited judicial review” process available under state law for land-use disputes causing immediate harm. It asks the court to declare the moratorium invalid, confirm ECO TIP’s vested rights and permit-choice protections, exempt the project, award damages for alleged violations of due-process property rights and grant attorney’s fees.
ECO TIP’s manager is Kirk Bradley, chair of Sanford-based Lee-Moore Capital and a member of the University of North Carolina Board of Governors since 2021. The company is represented by Raleigh attorneys Robin Tatum and Mitchell Armbruster of the firm Smith Anderson.
County officials have not yet filed a formal response in court.
The dispute occurs against a backdrop of surging demand for data centers to support artificial intelligence training and cryptocurrency operations, and a recent analysis of federal court filings shows AI-related litigation is accelerating rapidly.
According to a report by Paige McKirahan, marketing manager at litigation strategy firm DOAR, an examination of 168 federal district court cases in which AI was central to the dispute found filings remained low through 2022 and 2023 before jumping sharply in 2025, with 94 new cases filed that year. Early 2026 has already seen 26 additional cases, an indication the trend is continuing.
The cases are concentrated in a handful of districts, led by the Northern District of California with 53 filings, followed by the Southern District of New York with 23.
OpenAI has been named in 71 suits, more than 40% of the total analyzed.
McKirahan notes plaintiffs are testing a variety of claims involving intellectual property, data use, privacy and liability as courts begin to apply established legal doctrines to emerging generative AI technologies.
