A real estate developer filed permit applications Monday with regulators to turn the former International Paper mill site in Jay into an artificial intelligence data center, five months after his original project was put on hold.
JGT2 Redevelopment, owned in part by Portland commercial real estate developer Tony McDonald, issued a public notice published Sunday in the Sun Journal that it planned to file an amended site location permit and an air emission license application with Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection.
McDonald plans to work with Sentinel Data Centers, the same national data center operator as before, Jay Town Manager Shiloh LaFreniere told a Select Board meeting Monday evening. McDonald told her the agreement with Sentinel is not final yet. JGT2 plans to hold a public meeting at the Jay mill site, tentatively scheduled for Dec. 10, to talk about water and electric grid use by the data center.
The revival of the project comes weeks before a new Legislature with larger Democratic majorities convenes in December under Gov.-elect Hannah Pingree, a Democrat who has said she would sign a ban on new data centers. Gov. Janet Mills cited the Jay project when she vetoed a temporary ban in April, and environmental groups are already drafting bills to regulate data centers in the coming session.
The DEP requires a site permit if a project will have a substantial effect on the environment. The project must meet state standards for stormwater management, groundwater protection, infrastructure, wildlife and fisheries, noise, and unusual natural areas.
The site application would allow redevelopment of part of the former mill into a data center and include reuse of existing paper mill buildings to hold computing equipment, according to the public notice. It also would allow redevelopment of the existing parking lot and rail yard to contain HVAC equipment, and construction of a subsurface wastewater system for sanitary sewer. The air permit would include installation of two diesel standby generators to provide emergency power.
The move follows a plan first made public by the Bangor Daily News in March to convert the closed paper mill into a $550 million data center occupying 1 million square feet and run by Sentinel. The mill was long owned by International Paper and was a regional powerhouse employing more than 1,000 people before it closed in 2023.
In June, LaFreniere said JGT2 informed her that Sentinel did not intend to move forward with the project, which was put on indefinite hold. The town’s Select Board will discuss the project at a regularly scheduled meeting Monday evening.
Much of the former mill lot has been cleaned out, with the wood room and administration building both dismantled and removed. Four gas turbines also were hauled off the property, Select Board member Gary McGrane said.
The original project stalled even after Mills in April vetoed what would have been the first statewide ban on new data centers in the country. It is not clear why McDonald is restarting the project. Neither he nor LaFreniere responded to multiple requests for comment.
Mills’ office had been working with McDonald for weeks before the veto to have his project exempted from the ban, according to emails obtained by the BDN through a public records request. But the Legislature passed the bill without giving the Jay development special protection, so Mills vetoed it.
Work on that data center had been scheduled to start in July. The developer has since sold the mill’s large paper machines to a company in Pakistan.
The temporary statewide ban was intended to give the state time to study data centers and recommend ways to develop them in Maine. The facilities are blamed for driving up electric prices, using unsustainable amounts of water, and producing light and air pollution in other parts of the U.S.
The permit filings also come as voters in at least eight more Maine towns approved data center bans in the Nov. 3 election. Jay does not have a ban.
A request for a public hearing must be made to the DEP in writing within 20 days after the regulator accepts the applications for processing. Written public comments can be submitted any time while the applications are being processed.
Lori Valigra reports on the environment for the BDN’s Maine Focus investigative team. Email her at lvaligra@bangordailynews.com. Support for this reporting is provided by the Unity Foundation, a fund at the Maine Community Foundation and donations by BDN readers.