Residents of Sutton expressed shock and outrage this week when they learned one of Robert Kraft’s companies had proposed building a massive data center complex in their small town 10 miles south of Worcester.
But the idea was first discussed in public over a year ago when Sutton’s Select Board was encouraging a packaging company owned by the Kraft Group to develop a large parcel of land it owns on the north side of town, according to videos of public town Select Board meetings reviewed by the Globe.
It’s not clear when the Krafts took up the idea, which was discussed Tuesday at a Select Board meeting. In December, a Kraft representative at a Select Board meeting said they had not formally presented any plan to Sutton officials.
But there’s no doubt its $16 billion data center plan — potentially one of the largest in the country — has crashed headlong into the powerful political backlash nationwide against the energy-hungry facilities used to develop and run artificial intelligence systems.
The Kraft Group did not respond Wednesday to requests for comment.
The 383-acre parcel has been used for industrial purposes since the 1930s, according to town filings with the Worcester County Register of Deeds. Before the Krafts owned it, it housed a cement factory and a gravel pit.
In 2022, Sutton had given the Kraft company, Unified Global Packaging Group, a tax incentive deal to build a huge warehouse on part of a 383-acre parcel it bought for $9.5 million in 2020. But by 2025, Unified told the town it couldn’t find a tenant for a warehouse and it would have to reboot its plans.
At a meeting in March of last year, then-Select Board member Normand Champigny floated some advice on attracting a new major tenant — a data center. He had a modest-size one in mind, known as a co-location facility, or colo. In the meeting video, he said they’re not like the giants: “When I think of [a big tenant], I think of, for instance, a colo like Amazon Web Services.” Amazon’s cloud computing and AI unit lease data centers all over the world.
Representatives of the Kraft Group and Unified present at the meeting did not react to the suggestion at the time, according to the video. Another 18 months later, however, they embraced the idea of installing not just a co-location data center, but a massive, AI-capable data campus that would rank as one of the largest in the entire country.
Earlier in the meeting, Champigny also suggested the Kraft family should leverage its network of connections to find a tenant for the lot. “I know Jon Kraft is very engaged,” he said, referring to Robert Kraft’s son Jonathan Kraft, who is president of the Kraft Group. To that, the Kraft representative told town officials they were “leveraging those relationships all the time.”
Champigny, who is no longer on the board, made his suggestion well before the major backlash against data centers erupted this year. But he foresaw at the time one concern residents might ultimately have: There would be a “a water constraint” because the centers require so much water for cooling. Still, he’d heard that using recycled water “could be the answer.”
The current Kraft proposal includes the idea of using recycled water to avoid tapping town supplies.
That didn’t mollify Sutton residents who appeared in droves at a Select Board meeting to oppose the new Kraft proposal on Tuesday night.
“A facility of this scale would require vastly substantial quantities of water,” said Jessica Herbert, who grew up in Sutton and now resides in neighboring Millbury. Herbert said even if the water will be recycled from waste water, that raises questions over treatment and environmental harm.
Reached on Wednesday, Champigny told the Globe he never imagined a data center of the size proposed by the Kraft Group. Co-location facilities are much smaller, he noted, than “the monstrosity” of an AI data center.
His first preference for the property would be a sports complex, maybe with tennis courts, soccer fields, and restaurants, he said, modeled after Patriot Place in Foxborough. Ultimately, Sutton residents will get to weigh in, he said. “Town Meeting is their meeting,” he said. “That’s going to have the final say.”
Regardless of Champigny’s intentions, whispers of a data center project loomed over the town and persisted throughout the months that followed.
At a Select Board meeting on Dec. 9, 2025, members of the public expressed their disdain for a data center — although there was no official proposal on the table.
At that meeting, Select Board member Jesse Limanek implied that some data center concept might be in the works but didn’t offer details.
“As far as I know, the only ones who received that information were members of our board,” he said cryptically. “If that information somehow got out into the public and it’s incorrect, unfortunately that meant, you know, one of your elected officials shared information that they received in confidence,” he told attendees, according to video of the meeting.
At that same meeting, Matthew Piekarski, the Kraft Group representative, said of the rumors: “We have not formally presented anything to the town. We haven’t talked to the town with regards to any specific opportunities within Lot 1 itself.”
Limanek has not responded to requests for comment from the Globe.
Representatives from Unified were present at that meeting as well.
Len McAleer, Unified’s chief operating officer, reiterated at the December meeting that any project built on the empty lot would have to be in “the best interest of the town.”
“Data center, no data center, whatever it happens to be, we’re going to put in that area what is in the best interest of the town and us,” McAleer said at the meeting.
This week, Town Manager Austin J. Cyganiewicz told the Globe that he first officially heard of the mega-data-center proposal in late October. Then, following a review and assembly of relevant documents, he sent a 52-page memo to members of the board.
That’s when Select Board members say they became familiar with the plan. Board Member Jim Ettemarna even asked the rest of the board at the Tuesday meeting whether anyone had signed a nondisclosure agreement. They said they had not.
“Has anybody on the board been in meetings with Unified?” he asked. “To my understanding, this is the first time.”
Aaron Pressman can be reached at aaron.pressman@globe.com. Follow him @ampressman. Yogev Toby can be reached at yogev.toby@globe.com.