The agenda item that dominated the Tuesday, March 10, 2026, Lowell City Council meeting was a public hearing and vote to amend the city’s Zoning Code to impose a one-year ban on new or expanded data centers in the city. After much public comment and discussion among councilors, the new ordinance was adopted by a 10 to 0 vote with one councilor abstaining (Dan Rourke is treasurer of the Lowell Youth Football League which receives some funding from Markley Group, a data center operator).

Let’s start with some background: The impetus for this vote was the rapid expansion of the Markley Group data center in the residential neighborhood known variably as South Lowell, Sacred Heart, and The Bleachery. Markley arrived in Lowell in 2015 with overwhelming support from city government. Back then, cloud computing was the big thing in the tech world. The “internet” was migrating from customized servers maintained by individual companies in their own spaces to centralized facilities that more efficiently delivered the broad infrastructure needed to be a presence online.

But technology never stands still and in recent years the onset of artificial intelligence has exploded the demand for data centers. Wisely, from a business perspective, Markley has taken advantage of this by expanding its operations in Lowell.

However, a big part of what Markley provides is a guarantee of 24/7 operations. A global customer whose entire operation depends on the internet doesn’t want its business shut down when South Lowell suffers a power outage, so Markley relies heavily on diesel generators for emergency power. These must be able to run for multiple days, so a large quantity of diesel fuel must be stored on site, and they must be tested regularly, which means these generators don’t just turn on when there is a disaster. Both the fuel storage and the generator operation (and perhaps some other things) have been disruptive to the neighborhood which is almost entirely residential outside of the Markley compound.

This conflict has persisted for several years, and the city administration and the council have tried to mediate things between the company and the neighbors, however, my general sense is that Markley has committed to some remedial measures but was then very slow in implementing them. I think this cost the company some credibility with councilors.

Still, this was a difficult vote for councilors. Lowell has a good reputation among midsize cities in the region, but big companies are not beating a path to the city, so no one wants to lose one that is already located here. Perhaps more importantly from a political perspective, many Markley employees and many of the union tradespeople who work on Markley expansion projects appeared at the council meeting to urge councilors not to mess with their jobs.

Offsetting that were the many neighbors who appeared Tuesday night with concerns about noise, safety and pollution. Others who live elsewhere in Lowell spoke in favor of the moratorium on similar grounds.

In the end, the unanimity of the council vote was driven by two things: First, the moratorium only lasts for a year and, while it could be extended, it does have a fixed end date so that if the council neglects the issue it will end by its own terms. Second, the moratorium only affects further expansion of the Markley facility so current jobs there should not be threatened (or so the councilors believe although Markley management has a say in that).

The ordinance adopted by councilors (available here) incorporated some modifications suggested by the Lowell Planning Board which, by law, must review any proposed zoning amendment before the council votes on it.

The Planning Board held a public hearing on March 2, 2026, and then, in a March 4, 2026,  letter to the city council recommending adoption of the moratorium, cited as reasons:

(1) The rapid growth of AI and cloud data warrants the City’s need to review the impact on the City’s infrastructure including energy, water consumption, health concerns, emissions, drinking water, effects on ratepayers, noise, and sewage; and (2) The moratorium will provide the City time to create standards addressing the impact of Data Centers.

In the same letter, the Board recommended several modifications that the city solicitor said had been incorporated into the measure voted on by the council.

Although Markley would likely disagree, this seems like a good outcome for the city, however, that will only remain so if the council and the city administration stay on top of this issue rather than let it fade away for a year until the moratorium is set to expire. Communities across the United States are dealing with this same issue and no one has yet figured out how best to address it. Given Lowell’s long history of managing (or falling victim to) changing industrial technology, the city is well-suited to provide some leadership on this issue. Whether the current players choose to do that remains to be seen.

Speaking of industrial history, a common complaint about the Markley facility is that an operation of that scale should not be situated amid a residential neighborhood. While that’s true, it’s also ahistorical.

Long before any houses existed, this site was used for industrial purposes. In 1833, the Lowell Bleachery was established on the Markley site. This was a specialized facility for bleaching, dyeing, printing, and finishing cotton and woolen fabrics produced by the Lowell mills. All those processes required a large quantity of water which the Bleachery obtained from the adjacent River Meadow Brook. Not surprisingly, the water discharged from the Bleachery was heavily polluted but as was the practice at the time, it was just dumped back into the brook which carried it to the Concord River and beyond. None of that prevented developers from constructing densely packed houses all around the facility to provide residences for Bleachery employees.

Although the Lowell Bleachery technically hung on until after World War II, it was mostly gone by the start of the Great Depression. In 1939, Prince Spaghetti Company, which was founded by three Sicilian immigrants in 1912 on Boston’s Prince Street, purchased the main Bleachery site and constructed a large pasta-making facility.

Boosted by the memorable slogan, “Wednesday is Prince spaghetti day,” the Prince facility thrived and provided jobs for hundreds of residents of the neighborhood. That changed when the Pellegrino family, which had controlled Prince since 1941, sold the company to the food conglomerate Borden, Inc. in 1987. Ten years later, Borden closed the Lowell plant which resulted in the loss of over 400 jobs, most held by Lowell residents.

In the intervening years, the facility had several uses that didn’t amount to much until 2015 when Markley arrived. One of the things that made the site attractive to Markley was that robust buildings designed to hold tons of flour and water for pasta-making were eminently suitable for a 21st century high security data center.

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Several councilors spoke favorably about a Department of Planning and Development report on the use of Tax Increment Financing (TIF) and Tax Increment Exemptions (TIE) to incentivize economic and housing development.

The report explains that Lowell utilizes TIF and TIE programs to drive private investment and job creation by offering partial tax exemptions on property value growth. These incentives have leveraged $250 million for housing and thousands of quality jobs. Unlike other cities, Lowell maintains shorter, lower-rate exemptions to maximize long-term municipal revenue. For example, most Gateway Cities offer average exemptions of 45% over 10 years, but Lowell’s TIE schedule averages only 14% over 7 years.

Councilor Dan Rourke said, “fixing potholes is important, but this kind of stuff deserves more attention. It shows how a Gateway City can use these tools to get businesses to come here and offer employment and home ownership. We get criticism that these programs are ‘tax giveaways’ but there is a big payoff that should be recognized and acknowledged.”

I agree with Rourke. It’s unfortunate that to attract businesses to Lowell, we must provide a tax incentive, but since every other community does it, Lowell must do it as well, otherwise businesses will just go elsewhere.

The same misguided dynamic identified by Rourke often is applied to UMass Lowell. For years, any time the University acquired a new property, there were those in the city – including a few councilors – who decried the loss of property tax revenue, while completely ignoring the many ancillary benefits that a thriving University bestows on the city.

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Happy St. Patrick’s Day to all who observe. Councilors will not be constrained in the celebration since they cancelled their regularly scheduled March 17th meeting on account of the holiday.

Back in 2022 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the arrival of the first Irish immigrants in Lowell, Dave McKean and I produced a book, Lowell Irish 200. The book tells the story of the Irish immigrants who dug the canals and helped construct the textile mills when Lowell was first established and explores the subsequent contributions of the Irish of Lowell in education, labor, politics, business, and culture. Besides Dave and I, other contributors were Gray Fitzsimons, Bob Forrant, Joyce Burgess, Christine O’Connor and Walter Hickey.

Lowell Irish 200 may be ordered from Lulu Press at this link.

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Also available from Lulu Press is my newest book, Lowell: A Concise History, which tells the city’s story from the arrival of the first English explorers in the 1620s up until the present. A print copy of the book may be purchased here and a PDF version may be downloaded for free from richardhowe.com at this link.

Some would-be readers may have confused Lulu Publishing with our own lala books, Lowell’s great independent bookstore at 189 Market Street. However, lala books has graciously agreed to offer some copies of Lowell: A Concise History for in-person sales, while they last.