Zoning in Spartanburg County: Data Centers and the 2026 Moratorium

One data center rejected, another approved -- with a 40-year, $2 million-a-year tax deal

Spartanburg County's data-center story runs in two very different directions at once. In February 2026, County Council rejected a proposed $3 billion data center planned for the Tyger River Industrial Park along Highway 290 near Anderson Mill Road, after real, organized community pushback. But a separate project had already gone the other way: in 2025, the county approved a data center for the former Kohler Plant site on South Pine Street, developed by Northmark Strategies, reportedly a $2.8 billion project -- and the incentive package attached to it lets the developer buy down its property-tax bill to a maximum of $2 million per year for each year of a 40-year deal. A state Senate attempt to block incentive packages like this one failed on April 23, 2026. That gap between a rejected project and an approved one with a genuinely enormous, multi-decade tax concession tells you the county's appetite for data-center development is real but selective, and highly dependent on the specific site and community response -- not a blanket policy in either direction.

The approved Kohler Plant project has continued generating its own friction even after approval: its developer has separately faced a South Carolina Department of Environmental Services regulatory hearing over plans to power the facility using natural gas turbines, and local reporting has described the project running into an additional legal obstacle. None of this necessarily threatens the project's underlying approval, but it underscores that an 'approved' data center in Spartanburg County can still carry open regulatory and legal threads worth tracking if you're evaluating nearby land.

A countywide moratorium was moving through Council -- but had not passed as of September 2026

In response to the Tyger River fight and the scale of the Kohler Plant tax deal, County Council began moving toward a one-year, countywide moratorium on new data-center applications. First reading passed June 22, 2026, and the county invoked the 'pending-ordinance doctrine' to freeze new applications immediately rather than waiting for final adoption -- with a specific carve-out written in to exempt the already-approved Kohler Plant project from the freeze. Second reading advanced July 21, 2026. The scheduled third and final reading, however, was delayed from an August 2026 meeting to September 21, 2026, per Fox Carolina and WSPA reporting current as of this page's research.

That means, as of this page's 2026-09 review, the moratorium had NOT yet been finally adopted -- it remained a pending ordinance with applications frozen under the pending-ordinance doctrine, not yet a confirmed, final one-year ban. This is a genuinely live, moving target: if your land-buying or leasing decision depends on whether new data-center development is currently allowed in a given part of Spartanburg County, do not rely on this page's 2026-09 snapshot -- confirm the moratorium's actual, current status (adopted, further delayed, amended, or allowed to lapse) directly with the Spartanburg County Planning and Development Department before assuming either outcome.

State legislation could still reshape the picture

Layered on top of the county-level fight, the South Carolina Legislature had multiple data-center-focused bills pending as of this research pass -- including S.867 and S.902, both of which had received committee hearings in the House and Senate, and a separate bill (S.784) proposing to eliminate blanket sales-tax exemptions for data centers and add heightened eminent-domain requirements. Reporting also indicates other counties, including York and Horry, were independently considering their own data-center-specific regulations around the same time, suggesting this is a genuinely statewide policy moment rather than a Spartanburg-only story. Any of this state-level activity could change the incentive and permitting landscape for a Spartanburg County data-center project (approved, pending, or future) faster than a county-level ordinance alone would.

What this means if you're evaluating industrial-corridor land here

1. Confirm the moratorium's actual, current status directly with Spartanburg County Planning and Development -- as of this page's September 2026 review, the third and final reading had been delayed to September 21, 2026, and had not yet passed.
2. If your parcel is near the Tyger River Industrial Park (Highway 290/Anderson Mill Road corridor), understand that a large, well-financed project was rejected there in February 2026 after community opposition -- a signal that new industrial-scale proposals in that specific area may face real local resistance regardless of the county's broader posture on data centers.
3. If your interest involves the former Kohler Plant site or South Pine Street corridor specifically, ask directly about the current status of the SCDES natural-gas-turbine review and the reported legal obstacle facing that project, on top of confirming its exemption from the pending moratorium.
4. Watch the state legislature's data-center bills (S.867, S.902, S.784) if your plan depends on a specific tax-incentive structure remaining available -- state-level reform could change what a county is even able to offer a future project.