JGT2 Revives $550 Million AI Data Center Plan at Closed Maine Mill

JGT2 Redevelopment filed an amended site permit and an air emissions license with Maine's Department of Environmental Protection on Nov. 9, reviving a $550 million plan to convert the former Androscoggin paper mill in Jay, Maine, into an AI data center. The filing arrives five months after the 1 million-square-foot project was put on hold, and weeks before a new Legislature considers tight limits on the industry.

The mill's owner, partly held by Portland developer Tony McDonald, filed the paperwork on a Monday. In June, JGT2 told the town that operator Sentinel Data Centers did not intend to move forward with the original March announcement. McDonald now says the companies never stopped working together and that Sentinel has signed a new customer, according to Jay Town Manager Shiloh LaFreniere, who spoke at a Select Board meeting. The Sentinel agreement remains unfinished, she noted. The quiet resumption is, at minimum, a lesson in reading developer pauses.

What do the filings actually propose?

The site application would reuse existing mill buildings for computing equipment and place HVAC systems in the former parking lot and rail yard. A subsurface wastewater system is also planned. The air permit covers two 3.25-megawatt diesel standby generators for emergency power.

The power and water figures are the more interesting part:

• The data center would draw on an existing 82-megawatt power contract the mill held.
• A closed-loop cooling system would hold roughly 260,000 gallons, down from an original design that consumed 300,000 gallons per day.
• McDonald described a "neo compute" model in which 100 or more smaller customers share the facility rather than one hyperscaler.

In its DEP filing, JGT2 said it tried to follow the draft recommendations of Governor Janet Mills' Data Center Advisory Council "as closely as possible." The Portland Press Herald reported the developer's estimate of up to 1,000 construction jobs and 150 permanent positions. The mill employed more than 1,000 people before it closed in 2023. JGT2 has tentatively scheduled a public meeting at the site for Dec. 10 covering water use, power and the local economy.

Why the politics changed

Mills cited the Jay project when she vetoed a temporary statewide data center moratorium in April. Her successor will not. Governor-elect Hannah Pingree has said she would sign a ban on new data centers, and a new Legislature with larger Democratic majorities convenes in December.

"Jay deserves good jobs and investment at the mill site, but not at the cost of ratepayers, neighbors or the environment," Pingree said on Tuesday. She added that Jay should not be "the testing ground" before Maine has strong rules. At least eight Maine communities voted for local data center pauses or bans in last week's midterm elections.

The contrast is stark. A governor who vetoed a moratorium hands office to a governor-elect who would sign a ban, while the project's permits move through the state agency in between. Timing, in permitting as in comedy, is most of the work.

Elsewhere in New England, developers are pursuing far larger sites, including the Kraft Group's proposed 900-megawatt campus in Sutton, Massachusetts. Jay's 82 megawatts is small by comparison, and its future now depends on whether DEP approvals and a final Sentinel agreement can land before Maine's rules tighten around them.