09/22/2026
CLEVELAND-BRADLEY FREE PRESS: “Seventy-five people answered our survey on Project River. Seventy-two said no. Two said yes. One is still deciding. That's 75 of our neighbors telling their own elected officials what they want, in their own words, and we're not stopping at 75.
Two projects. Two companies. One fight.
Project River belongs to the Wright family, developing privately under the name Wright Industrial Group, separate from Wright Brothers Construction even though the construction company's CEO, Mitchell Simpson, has been the public face of it. The Wright family has owned the 850 acres along the Hiwassee River for about two decades. The plan is $11.3 billion: a 500-megawatt biomass plant burning southern pine, a 1,000-megawatt natural gas plant, and a request for 360 megawatts of backup power from TVA. No data center tenant has signed a contract yet, but Simpson has called one "very likely." The project is led by the Wright family separately from the construction business James and Robert Wright formed in 1961, though the contractor may be involved at the site.
Project Midspan belongs to SDCL Tennessee Propco LLC, a company tied to a London-based investment firm with its U.S. office in New York. SDCL says it entered an agreement in July 2024 giving it the option to acquire about 306 acres in the Hiwassee River Industrial Park near Exit 33 for development of a large-scale data center. That's the land directly behind Walker Valley High School, with the nearest building only about 1,700 feet from the school. Midspan has stayed almost entirely silent about what it actually plans to build, a sharp contrast to Project River's public meetings and press releases. What we know is this: on September 17, SDCL sued Bradley County, arguing the county's own data center zoning rules, the ones passed in April after residents demanded protection, amount to an illegal ban.
Here's the connection nobody handed us. This is the same property that sparked flyers and packed commission meetings back in April, before anyone had a name to call it. Residents showed up then. We showed up then. County officials told us at the time there was nothing to see, no application filed, nothing to worry about. They just weren't telling us the whole story.”
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