Central Maine Could Soon Be Home to a $300 Million Artificial Intelligence Data Center

It is wild to think about how far AI has come in the last few years.

It wasn't that long ago that we were laughing when we heard about an office app that was AI-enabled and cringing at the sight of Will Smith rolling around in spaghetti.

Now, our AI tools flawlessly summarize our emails and help us write reports.  And, that video of Will Smith?  It is indistinguishable from the real thing.

Of course, in order to do all those amazing things with AI, we need lots of processing power.  In fact, we need entire buildings filled with servers to keep our AI tools running.

It looks like one of the old mill buildings in Lewiston may soon become an artificial intelligence data center.

According to an article in the KJ, Lewiston city leaders are getting ready to vote next week on a $300 million artificial intelligence data center at Bates Mill Number Three.  That old mill has been sitting quiet for years, and the proposal would finally bring it back to life.

Owner Bill Johnson has been trying to land a new use for the building ever since TD Bank moved out in 2020.  After working through a few ideas with the city, he teamed up with MillCompute LLC.

City staff say the plan would bring a Tier Three data center to the mill in at least two stages.  Developers want to keep growing the project by adding new infrastructure across the Bates Mill campus.

Greg Mitchell, who speaks for the group, says the goal is to turn Lewiston into a new type of industrial giant built around AI for all of New England.  The first two floors of the mill, about 85,000 square feet, would hold the data center.  The upper floors would become modern office and innovation space for tech companies, researchers, and health care technology teams.

City Administrator Bryan Kaenrath said the whole plan is a major win for Lewiston because of the new tax revenue and the jobs it would bring.  He says the project could put the city on the map in the growing world of technology and AI. It is expected to create around twenty to thirty jobs.

For context, the Tier system used by the Uptime Institute rates data centers based on infrastructure.  Tier Three centers offer nearly full time availability with very few interruptions.  Fiber optics connections in the area make the mill the perfect site for such a project.

These big AI facilities also need huge amounts of electricity and a lot of water for cooling.  MillCompute plans to work with the city on the construction of a natural gas powerplant in the mill complex.  This powerplant would provide the center with the needed electricity.

 Even if it is approved, there is no timeframe on when the data center would become operational.