Imagine an expanse of two-story buildings filled to the brim with computer servers that sprawls over an area about half the size of Atlantic Station.
That’s what a data center development team envisions for a 60-acre property in Douglas County, about 30 miles west of downtown Atlanta.
State paperwork this week revealed the initial plan for the mammoth data center campus near I-20, which would add to Atlanta’s growing status as a hub for online storage farms. Details were scant, including the project’s end user, but the effort joins a trend of supersized — and energy hungry — data center campuses that are beginning to strain Georgia’s power grid, concerning some lawmakers, utility leaders and residents.
Texas-based Trammell Crow Co. is developing the proposed data center campus at 2912 Post Road, according to a Development of Regional Impact (DRI) filing made public Monday. Trammell Crow declined to comment.
Credit: Microsoft
Credit: Microsoft
Property records show the land is currently farmland and zoned residential. It will need to be rezoned to allow for the data center development, which could total 2.3 million square feet of facilities spread across seven buildings. The project’s first phase is estimated to be complete in 2027, according to the DRI.
DRIs are a required state analysis for large projects set to impact multiple jurisdictions or an entire region. The filing was made to the Atlanta Regional Commission, which will vet the application and analyze how local infrastructure will be affected.
Data centers are effectively warehouses filled with computer servers that store files, power online services and house artificial intelligence systems. They’ve become one of the hottest uses for undeveloped real estate in metro Atlanta, with roughly 20 gigantic data center campuses either in development or preparing for sizable expansions across Georgia, mostly near Atlanta.
Douglas County emerged as Atlanta’s premiere data center market with county leaders incentivizing facilities by Microsoft, Google, Switch and other companies by offering property tax breaks. Chris Pumphrey, president of the Elevate Douglas Economic Partnership, said the county has stopped incentivizing data centers given how many have flocked to the area, shifting its economic tools to court other industries, such as media and entertainment.
When asked about the latest data center proposal, Pumphrey said Elevate Douglas did not recruit this project and hasn’t committed any incentives to its development team.
Since 2023, data center construction in metro Atlanta has increased 211%, which is the fastest among major data center markets across the country, according to data from real estate services firm CBRE.
Georgia’s legislature recently approved a bill to suspend sales tax breaks on new data centers over concerns that taxpayers aren’t getting much financial return from the multimillion-dollar incentive program. House Bill 1192, which faced intense pushback and lobbying efforts from data center companies, is now before Gov. Brian Kemp for his consideration. Kemp has until May 7 to sign or veto the bill.
The legislation was prompted, in part, by Georgia Power asking regulators to approve huge amounts of new electricity-generating capacity — mostly powered by fossil fuels — mainly due to the vast number of data center projects across the state. Georgia Power executives have said data centers are responsible for roughly 80% of the demand crunch it says it is facing.
The Georgia Public Service Commission voted last month to greenlight most of the additions Georgia Power requested.
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