MAINE PUBLIC • June 7, 2021
A California company will bring a $300 million data center to a Millinocket site that once held the world’s largest paper mill, in the culmination of years of effort by leaders from across the Katahdin region. Nautilus Data Technologies said Saturday that it would open a 60-megawatt data center on 13 acres of the 1,400-acre former site of the Great Northern Paper Company, becoming the first industrial tenant since the site stopped producing paper in 2008. Leaders from Our Katahdin, a non-profit that owns the property, have lobbied for new tenants since the group purchased the site in 2017. The data center is expected to bring up to 30 jobs to an area that has struggled economically since the closing of Great Northern Paper Company as well as the Greater Northern Paper Co. mill in East Millinocket in 2014.