Athens film studio wants to reboot as a data center

When Joel Harber started construction on a film studio in Athens in late 2021, not a single soundstage in the state was empty. The demand was so high that there was a waiting list for productions to get into one.

But nearly four years, two union strikes and more than 1 million square feet of new soundstage space added to Georgia later, roughly three-quarters of Georgia’s stages are empty, Harber estimates. Not only is production down, but there is a clear oversupply of space.

Harber doesn’t want to wait any longer for the industry to rebound. He has submitted plans to turn the Athena Studios campus and parts of its surrounding land into a data center, buildings stocked with computer servers that power artificial intelligence and our digital lives.

The plans would involve converting soundstages and support space into data facilities and building new ones spanning about 1.3 million square feet, larger than Athens’ Georgia Square Mall.

A vertical film production set is seen inside Athena Studios on Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025. As film production slows in the state, the landlords have proposed converting the Athena Studios campus into a data center. (Miguel Martinez/AJC)

But Athens-Clarke County does not have a formal definition for “data center” in its zoning code. And communities across Georgia have seen heated debates over sprawling server farms.

In early December, ACC commissioners voted unanimously to ban new data centers in Athens until at least March so it can establish zoning and land use standards for them. Athena is zoned for light industrial, and data centers are typically zoned for heavy industrial use.

“Real estate is a market, just like anything else,” Harber said. “If the market shifts, you have to be able to pivot. That’s where we are today.”

‘Flying about half-mast’

Athena broke ground at the end of 2021. The first phase of the project included four soundstages totaling about 84,000 square feet, along with 100,000 square feet of office, support and mill space.

One part of the campus is a production learning center for the University of Georgia, where it houses its Master of Fine Arts program in Film, Television and Digital Media. The space, which is not behind the larger studio gates, includes a large soundstage, classrooms, offices and a mill where productions can build and store items. The initial vision for the studio was to have the students serve as production assistants and interns on projects that would shoot at the stages. The UGA building is not part of the data center plans.

A few projects have filmed at Athena, including Blumhouse Productions’ horror feature “The Woman in the Yard,” which shot much of its principal photography in nearby Bostwick. Athens native Bryan Redding shot his first feature “American Deadbolt,” which is set entirely in one room, at one of Athena’s stages. Three James Franco-fronted projects also shot there in succession.

The studio was always a bit of an anomaly among Georgia’s soundstages. It was far from Atlanta, where the world’s busiest airport is located and the majority of the state’s skilled crew workers live. But it was an answer to a shortage of soundstage space Georgia experienced as production boomed in the years both before and shortly after the pandemic.

The few stages available to rent in Georgia during that time were tightly booked and commanded high rates. Developers saw opportunity. Several new studios, mostly around the Atlanta area, were built between 2020 and 2024, doubling the amount of available space statewide to 4.4 million square feet.

Some of the new stages, Athena included, finished construction during the Hollywood strikes of 2023, which halted work for more than six months. Athena did see business during this time — “American Deadbolt” secured a waiver from the Screen Actors Guild to film during the strikes.

The end of the strikes was a reprieve to Georgia’s soundstage operators. However, production across the U.S. didn’t return to that same gangbusters pace for a number of reasons. Financing wasn’t as readily available and fewer projects were being greenlit, and productions were increasingly being sent overseas, where costs to shoot were cheaper.

“We weathered that storm. We came out on the other side,” Harber said. “[Athena] and I think Georgia in general was still flying about half-mast as far as production activity in the state.”

Stakeholders in the industry, from behind-the-camera crew members to soundstage owners, have recited the same mantra over and over again for more than a year: survive ‘til ‘25. But work still hasn’t materialized.

Film and television productions spent a combined $2.3 billion in Georgia between July 2024 and June of this year, according to the Georgia Film Office. This is down from $2.6 billion from the previous fiscal year and about half the record $4.4 billion in fiscal year 2022.

An alley at Athena Studios in Athens, Ga., shows little activity between the studio stages on Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025. As film production declines in the state, the developer has proposed converting the Athena Studios campus into a data center. (Miguel Martinez/ AJC)

He said 2024 had been many industry professionals’ worst year in business, and 2025 was worse.

“No one that any of the other stage owners or any of the equipment service providers I’ve talked to, no one can figure out how that much money was spent in Georgia,” Harber said.

Changing landscape

Over the past year, soundstage owners pivoted to find alternative streams of income, such as leasing space to nontraditional users or transforming it entirely.

A Chamblee studio signed a lease for a children’s indoor adventure park. Electric Owl Studios near Decatur played host to a non-traditional professional tennis league. Raulet Property Partners, one of the first groups to get into the soundstage business in Georgia, converted some of its space back to lease to industrial users and sold off two of its stages.

Harber and his team began discussing ways to pivot in the spring. A data center seemed like a likely option.

The property, a few miles east of the Athens bypass residents call the Loop, is secluded, has major electric power transmission lines running through it and is surrounded by acreage initially designated for a second phase of the studio. Plus, it was already zoned for light industrial use.

Data center development has boomed in Georgia over the last three years as the demand for data storage continues to grow. Some communities have embraced data centers as sources of tax revenue. But they’ve increasingly drawn opposition from residents fearful that data centers will drain their natural resources, generate noise and pollution, strain their utility grids and hurt their quality of life.

Only one data center facility has been built in Athens. It was developed as a facility that would be regulated by the Public Service Commission, so it was outside of the reach of the zoning code, Bruce Lonnee, Athens-Clarke County’s planning director, said in an interview.

At a Thursday Athens planning commission meeting, several residents urged to enact strict standards and involve the community in decisions.

“Some of these communities have suffered long enough,” Athens resident Derek Moffitt said. “If this is not something that you want as your neighbor, why would you vote to have it be someone else’s neighbor?”

Most of the plans that have been proposed for data centers in Athens over the last five or six years have met the definition of buildings that would go in a heavy industrial zone, Lonnee said. But they’re increasingly seeing newer facilities being proposed with smaller footprints, as well as less intensive water and power requirements than bigger centers.

“The landscape is changing quickly, the variety is changing quickly,” Lonnee said. “We like to take action but do it in a way where education is paired with it.”