Teresa Earnhardt Is One Step Closer To Destroying Dale Earnhardt’s Beloved Land As Mooresville Planning Board Approves Rezoning For Industrial Park

You absolutely hate, HATE to see it.

For quite a few months now, there’s been an ongoing debate and fight over what’s to become of the land that belonged to the late, great Dale Earnhardt. Last year, his widow, Teresa Earnhardt, put in a request to have it all rezoned for an industrial complex called Mooresville Technology Park in Mooresville, North Carolina, the town where Dale owned his Dale Earnhardt Inc. race team and lived nearby.

Now, Teresa doesn’t exactly have the best reputation with fans of NASCAR and her late husband, many of whom even refer to her as “The Wicked Witch of the South.” There are plenty of reasons as to why that is, which you can read more about HERE. Bottom line is, she’s not a favorite among NASCAR fans or North Carolinians, and this is thankfully something we have some say in, though it’s starting to head in the wrong direction very fast.

In October of last year, there was a highly-attended board meeting of almost 200 neighbors, including Rene Earnhardt, wife of Dale Earnhardt’s oldest son, Kerry, who all urged the Mooresville Planning Board to recommend denial of Teresa’s request. They denied it with a vote of 8-0, which was a great sign. The industrial park would sit on 399 acres of beautiful countryside, in one of the less populated areas of the county, on the eastern side of Iredell. According to The Charlotte Observer, “board member Shaun Hooper made the motion against the request, agreeing with residents that the proposal was out of character with Mooresville’s more agricultural, less populated eastern side.”

Of the 13 speakers who encouraged the board to vote against the proposal, at one point, one of them asked everyone who was at the meeting and opposed to the rezoning to stand up, and the entire crowd stood up. Literally only one person wants this to happen…

While many were hopeful things were headed in the right direction after that meeting, unfortunately, Teresa received approval by Mooresville planners on Tuesday of this week to put a major data center campus on her 400 wooded acres. The Mooresville Planning Board this time voted 4-3 to recommend a rezoning of Teresa’s land for what they’re calling Mooresville Technology Park, and it’s a damn shame that this will likely now come to life.

According to the Chrlotte Obserever, this isn’t the final say, though, because the Mooresville Board of Commissioners will have a final vote on the rezoning at a meeting yet-to-be announced. Planners say the park would bring 277 “recession-resistant” jobs (whatever that means), which would generate hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue for Mooresville and Iredell County as a whole over the next 20 years, according to Mooresville Technology Park.com. They estimated tax revenue to be in “the multiple billions of dollars,” but the destruction is would cause is priceless, though obviously I know developers could not care less about that.

Speaking from personal experience, I can tell you that area has already, very sadly, been overdeveloped to the max, and thousands of people have moved to the town over the last several years. It’s completely out of control for what was once a quaint small town with tons of gorgeous land, and Dale Earnhardt is obviously a main fixture around race city, how many people refer to Mooresville. I’m personally just so tired of seeing these types of things destroyed for the sake of money, and while I don’t know Teresa’s personal financial situation or what would lead her to do something like this, I think it’s gross to she would sell her husband’s land, that meant so much to him, to put a data center there. It’s shameful, and it’s wrong, but it’s hers to sell and that’s the saddest part about it.

If it all goes through, the the first building would be completed in 2029. Teresa Earnhardt did not attend the meeting on Tuesday night, but sent others to speak on her behalf. I know she’s an aging woman, and in some aspects I feel for her, I genuinely do, but she has had a bad reputation for years, and that makes it really hard to be sympathetic when it comes to something like this…

Now Teresa is trying to sell off Dale’s farm and turn it into an industrial park. Greediest woman alive.

— The Catch Fence (@TheCatchFence) October 19, 2024

I sincerely hope the town Commissioners will make the right call here, but when that type of money is involved, it feels pretty unlikely there’s much of a chance this doesn’t happen.

The full meeting is available to watch here: