SPARTANBURG, S.C. — A judge in Spartanburg, S.C., has dismissed a lawsuit that sought to halt a multibillion-dollar data center being built at the former Kohler plant on South Pine Street.
Concerned Citizens of Spartanburg County, represented by an environmental law group, argued the county broke its own land-use ordinance by approving Valara’s project as a minor land development, which gets staff-only review with no public hearing. The group wanted it treated as a major development, with public notice, public comment and a Planning Commission vote, and it asked the court to stop construction.
Judge J. Derham Cole Jr. threw out the case on Tuesday, Oct. 6. He ruled the group lacked standing because its concerns about noise, dust, traffic, transparency and health were too general, and said it should first have appealed to the county Board of Zoning Appeals within 10 days. He also found a challenge to a second permit premature because the county has not acted on it yet. The ruling ends the request to pause construction.
Valara, a subsidiary of NorthMark Strategies, has been building on about 270 acres at the site since 2025. Its pending second application covers four new buildings, a power yard and cooling systems. State regulators dismissed a separate challenge over the company’s gas turbine plans in August, and a one-year county pause on new data center applications approved in June does not apply to the project.