From protecting military equipment to protecting our digital lives, the former Fort Gillem Army depot south of Atlanta could soon enlist a large data center.
Digital Realty is proposing a 1.9 million-square-foot data center campus on a 97-acre slice of the former Fort Gillem property in Forest Park, according to a Development of Regional Impact filing.
The early-stage proposal, which includes scant details on the development, is the latest large computer storage farm project to join metro Atlanta’s pipeline. The Atlanta region has emerged as a hotbed for the data center industry in recent years and has amassed dozens of proposed projects since 2023.
Digital Realty is a Texas-based real estate investment trust focused on data centers, and the company operates multiple in the Atlanta area. Its most notable is at 56 Marietta St., a repurposed century-old downtown building that acts as one of the country’s largest carrier hotels, effectively a regional hub where telecommunications providers are able to connect with other data centers.
A company spokesperson told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution the project will be tethered to its downtown network-centric connectivity hub, which includes 56 Marietta. The new data center will have more than 200 megawatts of leasable computer storage space and will represent more than $2 billion in investment, Digital Realty said.
DRIs are state filings for large projects that trigger an infrastructure and traffic review. The Atlanta Regional Commission handles those analyses and issues recommendations to local governments, which, in this case, is the city of Forest Park.
Opened in 1941 during World War II, Fort Gillem began as the Atlanta Quartermaster Depot and later became the Atlanta Army Depot. The roughly 1,500-acre campus became a sub-installation to Fort McPherson in the 1970s and officially closed in 2011.
The military retained about 257 acres of Fort Gillem for forensic labs and various branch units, with Forest Park acquiring the bulk of the shuttered depot. Much of that land has been turned into logistics facilities and soundstages by the private sector.
A site map of Digital Realty’s proposed data center was not immediately available.
Data centers, while seen as vital infrastructure for digital purposes, have garnered controversy over their utility demands and large footprints. They often represent multibillion-dollar investments and can generate new tax revenues for local governments, but they typically require the same electricity demands as a small city while creating only a few dozen full-time jobs.
The Atlanta region emerged as the country’s top data center market for leasing activity in 2024, dethroning Northern Virginia for the first time, according to data from CBRE. The net amount of leased data center space in Atlanta increased by 706 megawatts in 2024, 56% more than Northern Virginia during the same year.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to add comment from Digital Realty.
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