Meta is the company behind the 2,000-acre hyperscale data center planned near Maysville, Kentucky. Mason County Judge-Executive Owen McNeill named it at the Oct. 13 fiscal court meeting, where commissioners voted unanimously to approve a community benefits and development agreement with the company.
The project had been zoned since May without a public name attached. What the county released Tuesday is a 40-year, five-phase plan. What it didn’t release is a single investment figure that every account agrees on.
The Mason County data center numbers
The Ledger Independent reported a $10 billion capital investment, with more to come in later phases. At the same meeting, county attorney Jim Parsons put the initial investment at about $15 billion, according to WKYT. McNeill described potential investment of up to $800 billion over the 40-year term.
Those can all be true at once if $10 billion to $15 billion is the first phase and $800 billion is a ceiling for full build-out, which is roughly how the Ledger Independent framed it when it tied the figure to industrial revenue bonds at about $10 billion per phase. Five phases at that rate gets nowhere near $800 billion, though. The difference matters for the county’s revenue math and for anyone sizing the construction market here.
Jobs estimates also vary. The county expects about 2,000 construction and trades jobs, while the Ledger Independent reported more than 4,000 at peak. Both accounts put permanent staff at a guaranteed minimum of 400.
Infrastructure that comes before the hyperscale campus
The firmer numbers are on the public works side. Meta’s commitments total more than $115 million, according to WCPO:
$40 million to the city of Maysville for water pipelines, mains and a pump station. $15 million to the Western Mason Water District for pipelines and a storage tank. And $45 million, to be matched with state money from the 2026 General Assembly, for a new regional water treatment plant. There’s also a $15 million public safety impact fee and a $750,000 payment for county expenses that doesn’t depend on the data center being built.
That’s a lot of water infrastructure for a campus whose cooling design hasn’t been disclosed. Neither has its power capacity or its utility. County officials said construction of the first phase is expected to start within three years of the agreement.
Kentucky is filling up with these. Elsewhere in the state, TeraWulf’s Muskie campus doubled to 1 GW and needs a new 765-kV substation before it can energize.
Who builds it, and when
No general contractor, designer or engineer has been named. Meta typically runs its campuses through a short list of national builders, and a first phase this size will need a deeper trade base than a rural county can supply on its own.
Local opposition hasn’t gone away. Residents of the Meadowland Village mobile home park expect to relocate, and neighbors told WCPO buyout offers rose from $20,000 to $50,000. A group of residents has filed a lawsuit, WCPO reported, without detailing the claims.
For contractors, the three-year start window is the useful number. Expect civil and water packages first, then a builder selection, and watch the utility filings for the megawatts the county didn’t announce. That’s where the preconstruction risk on data center jobs usually shows up.