The Site Screen · Maine Vision 2040

How We Screened

Power first. Then land, water, fiber, permitting, and people.

Every candidate was scored against the same inputs, weighted in this order. Claims about sites were checked against public sources: regulatory dockets, utility filings, town plans, and reporting. Several popular claims about Maine sites failed that check and are excluded from everything we publish.

Deliverable power, weighted first Available land, 100+ acres Water for cooling Fiber routes Permitting path Community partnership Workforce and housing Expansion potential

The honest finding: no site in Maine can serve a full-scale AI campus today. Not the mill sites, not the former air base, not the retired power plants. The grid that served the mills was built for the mills, and the region's utilities are already stretched.

So the plan phases. It starts near 100 megawatts, the scale a real Maine site can actually power, and grows as new generation is built alongside it. That is not a compromise. It is the same discipline every credible project in the region has arrived at, and it is how the mills themselves were built: one machine at a time, with the power to run it.

The Places

The screen points to the Katahdin region and the Penobscot corridor.

Three places combine land that can be worked with, water that mills once used by the millions of gallons, towns that own or steward their own future, and clean power nearby. These are study areas, not announcements. The owner and community conversations come before any commitment, in that order.

Study focus

Millinocket · One North

1,400 acres of the former Great Northern Paper site — once the largest paper mill in the world — stewarded by a community nonprofit One North. Hydroelectric dams that once powered the mill still run next door on the West Branch LIHI, and the adjacent reservoir supports gravity-fed cooling — the design a prior data center plan validated here. That same plan exposed the constraint: it was canceled in 2025 because the site could not deliver enough power BDN. Solving that is the first job.

Land + water + hydro adjacency

Study focus

East Millinocket

The town bought its former mill site and is preparing it with federal redevelopment funding: cleanup underway through 2026, structures stabilizing, the old substation under evaluation East Millworks Sen. Collins. Eight miles from Millinocket on the same river, it turns one campus story into a two-site region with room to grow.

Town-owned + federal investment

Study focus

Lincoln · Technology Park

387 town-owned acres on the Penobscot, already zoned and marketed for technology employers, with water, sewer, three-phase power, and highway access in place Town of Lincoln. Lincoln asked for exactly this kind of tenant. We take that seriously.

Ready host + utilities in place

Elsewhere in the screen	Status	What we found
Jay	On hold by others	A developer set out to build Maine's first large mill-site data center at the former Androscoggin Mill — then its operating partner withdrew in June 2026, and the project is on hold while the owner seeks new partners BDN. The interest validates the mill-site model; the stall is a lesson in why power and partners come first.
Wiscasset	Talks paused	The town signed an NDA with a developer in 2025 over a possible hyperscale campus drawn to the retired Maine Yankee interconnection, the strongest legacy power asset in the state LCN. The talks have been paused since late 2025.
Loring / Limestone	Underway by others	A data center project is starting small at the former air base — about 50 megawatts is available there today, with larger expansion dependent on new infrastructure BDN.
Old Town	Watching	The mill has been idle since 2023 and its owner is weighing options BDN. Strong bones: river, rail, and the region's only nearby natural gas service.
Winslow	Screened out	The former Scott mill sits on an island in the Kennebec, privately owned and in active use, and the town's industrial districts are at capacity. The region's quiet asset: a water district whose treatment plant was built with 12 million gallons a day of capacity for the mills, now producing about 3 KWD KWD history. That spare water matters to any central Maine siting.
Bucksport	Redeveloped	The former mill land has largely been sold and put back to work, which is good news BDN. It shows these sites do not stay empty.
Presque Isle	Full	The industrial park is at capacity with more than 60 tenants The County. Aroostook's constraint is power delivery, not ambition.

Potential Sites · Village Scale

A 20 megawatt first step, studied lot by lot.

The full campus needs new generation that does not exist yet. A village-scale campus of about 20 megawatts, two data halls and a small neighborhood, is something a central Maine site can power today from the existing grid, with a solar contract and honestly labeled bridge generation. In September 2026 we started studying specific parcels at that scale. The first is below, published in full so the method can be checked, but not by name: the owner and the town will hear from us before they read about themselves here.

Central Maine · a permitted business park

Village Site Alpha

A fully permitted business park of about 285 acres at an interstate interchange, owned by a regional development authority on behalf of two dozen towns, ten minutes from a service-center town. Fiber and natural gas on the lots, covenants that already list data centers as an approved use, a 115 kV substation 1.8 miles away, and a host town whose council has said it would rather recruit a data center than restrict one. The concept puts two 10 megawatt halls on one lot, along a utility corridor and below the park ridge, and about 30 homes with a green and a few shops on the next lot, with 14 acres of covenant-protected woods between them and the neighborhood.

148 acunsold, in eleven lots7 to 28 acres each, per the park's public listing

1.8 mito a 115 kV substationBuilt about 2020 on a second transmission line into the area

34.5 kVline through the north lotsThe park's own service is an office-grade loop

Yesdata centers, by covenantHomes and shops are not, yet

Concept aerial render of the village on Lot B with the data halls behind a tree band on Lot A — Concept render from the southeast: the village in front, the halls along the corridor behind the tree band. Conceptual image, Maine Vision 2040.

Footprint plan of two data halls and a 30-home village over satellite imagery with contours — The footprint plan over 10-foot contours. Lot lines approximate; not an engineering drawing.

The full study is its own page: the park, the concept, the ground, the vision from three vantage points, what it would take, the constraints you cannot see on the map, and the permits that reopen. Published whole, constraints included, and not yet by name.

Read the Village Site Alpha study

Also under study at village scale

Two more central Maine candidates, and the original.

Watching

Village Site Beta

A mill town whose municipal electric utility has served its mills since the 1880s and today counts the manufacturer on the former paper mill site as its largest customer. A gas pipeline built for the mill ends there. Hydro on the river next door. The open question is whether a small municipal system can absorb a 20 megawatt load.

Municipal power + gas + a mill town

Watching

Village Site Gamma

A town whose voters agreed this summer to accept the donation of a modern 170,000 square foot single-story plant closed in 2024, with part earmarked for a local food producer and the balance looking for an anchor. It fits a 5 to 10 megawatt start inside an existing shell rather than a new campus; 20 megawatts would need a new utility tap.

Existing shell + willing town

Study focus

Millinocket at 20 MW

The village concept was first drawn at the former Great Northern Paper site, where the hydro that powered the mill still runs next door. A 20 megawatt first phase there is smaller than the average output of the two dams beside the site, a scale comparison rather than a supply claim. Still the place for the full campus story; central Maine is closer to the workforce and the grid for the first step.

Hydro adjacency + the original village

The Power Plan

Six ways the campus gets its power. None of them lean on Maine ratepayers.

Maine law now points large computing loads toward a specific answer: generate beside the load. We agree with it. The plan combines these six approaches, phased so clean supply grows with the campus.

Generation beside the load

Maine law already blesses power that serves the load beside it: a generator supplying customers on its own or abutting property stays outside utility regulation, and the state's newest statute polices exactly how much of a private line may serve data centers PL 2025, ch. 85. That is the spine of this plan, because power that never touches the wider grid cannot strain it.

The dams that powered the mills

The West Branch hydro system was built more than a century ago to run a paper mill at Millinocket Penobscot Mills. Partnering with today's owners of that clean generation, so it once again serves industry beside it, is the most Maine-shaped power deal available.

Solar on mill acreage

Former mill sites carry hundreds of acres beyond the campus footprint. Solar with battery storage on land we already hold adds cheap daytime energy and pairs naturally with hydro's seasonal strengths.

A campus that flexes

AI training can pause and resume. We design the campus to curtail during peak hours, run on stored energy, and support the grid rather than stress it. Flexibility is what regional utilities have asked of data centers, and we build it in from day one.

Bridge power, honestly labeled

Where the first phase needs firm generation before clean supply catches up, compact on-site generation fills the gap, sized to the need, and retired as hydro, solar, and wind take over. Bridges are for crossing, not living on.

New Maine wind, when the wires exist

Northern Maine holds some of the best untapped wind on the eastern seaboard, and the state is actively procuring the transmission to unlock it — in July 2026, New England's grid operator named a preferred upgrade to carry 1,200 megawatts of planned Aroostook wind Maine Public Maine Monitor. When those wires are built, that wind is the growth plan from 100 megawatts toward full scale.

The mills worked because the power stood beside them. That is still the answer.

Straight Answers, Continued

What this page is, and what it is not.

It is a study, not a site announcement. No land is under contract. Owner and community conversations come before commitments, and the towns named here will hear from us before they read about us.
Site studies are published whole, and named later. When we study a specific parcel, as with Village Site Alpha above, we publish the constraints alongside the concept, and we withhold the name until the owner and the town have heard from us directly.
The numbers are verified or they are not used. Every site claim behind this screen was checked against public dockets, filings, and reporting. Claims that failed verification, including some widely repeated ones about Maine sites, are excluded.
Power realism comes first. We will not announce megawatts a grid study has not confirmed, and we will not build load that pushes costs onto Maine households.
The picture will change. State procurement decisions, utility studies, and community input will move this screen, and this page will move with them.

Talk with us See the village concept