One of the world’s largest companies has acquired a massive site within a fast-growing industrial corridor east of Atlanta that could soon house a large data center campus.
Amazon Data Services Inc., a subsidiary of online retail giant Amazon, recently paid $36 million to purchase a 430-acre site in Covington, roughly 40 miles east of downtown Atlanta, according to property records. First reported by the Atlanta Business Chronicle, the transaction involves Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud computing platform, which is evaluating the location for new data storage farms.
“We are constantly evaluating new locations based on customer demand,” an Amazon Web Services spokesperson told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in a statement. “We recently purchased land in Georgia and are performing due diligence in exploring possible data center locations.”
Data centers, which are large warehouses filled with computer equipment that stores online information, have emerged as one of the hottest uses for large tracts of land across metro Atlanta, with several multi-billion dollar campuses in the development pipeline. The sector has experienced explosive growth in recent years, fueled by corporate investment in artificial intelligence and increased demand for more storage space. Data centers typically employ only a few dozen workers.
Amazon Web Services is among the largest players in the data center industry, spending more than $18.3 billion from 2011 to 2022 on facility construction in the U.S., according to an internal economic impact study published last year. Amazon does not currently operate its own data storage farm in Georgia, but it does have partnerships with existing data centers, including Qualified Technology Services’ Atlanta location.
The massive Covington site along Ga. 142 near I-20 was earmarked for industrial development more than 18 months before Amazon’s subsidiary entered the picture and closed on its land acquisition Dec. 22.Preliminary state paperwork was filed during the summer of 2022 for Covington Industrial Park, a 4-million-square-foot logistics park that would have been larger than two Lenox Square malls. The proposal aimed to tap into the manufacturing and industrial development boom taking place along the interstate east of Atlanta. Marc Beechuk, the planning director for Covington, told the AJC at the time the logistics park would nearly double the industrial space in Newton County’s seat.
The land is roughly 10 miles away from Stanton Springs, an industrial park anchored by a Meta data center and a 1.1-million-square-foot plasma treatment center by Takeda. It’s also the future location of Rivian’s planned $5 billion electric vehicle factory, the state’s second largest economic development project. Cox Enterprises, which owns the AJC, owns about a 4% stake in Rivian.
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