Usually, a development project that’s larger than most regional malls is a rarity. But in south Fulton County, it’s been a routine occurrence this year.
A developer wants to build a 1.9-million-square-foot data center campus in the city of South Fulton, according to a preliminary state infrastructure assessment called a Development of Regional Impact filing. It’s the seventh project of its type to get its start in 2024 in south Fulton County, highlighting the area as one of the country’s most attractive markets for data center development.
Pitched by RSC Investment Management LLC, the Friday filing includes scant details on the high-tech project — effectively gigantic warehouses that store computer servers that power the internet, cloud services and artificial intelligence. The company, which Georgia Secretary of State’s records show was founded in August, could not immediately be reached for comment. It’s unclear whether an end user has been selected for the proposed data center.
The project location is a 59-acre plot near South Fulton Parkway and Stonewall Tell Road, a site within 2 miles of similar computer server farm projects by Microsoft and Vantage Data Centers. Atlanta’s Southside, including south Fulton County, is historically an industrial powerhouse because of its proximity to the world’s busiest airport.
Data centers, however, are different from other industrial and logistics projects since they employ only a few dozen workers despite their size. They generate additional tax revenues because of the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of equipment they house, but they also require enormous amounts of electricity to operate.
Georgia Power, for instance, has said much of the increasing demand for electricity statewide is to power new data centers.
In recent years, server farms have become one of the most desired uses for undeveloped land in metro Atlanta. By midyear, data center construction had increased 76% in the Atlanta market compared to the same time last year, the most among North America’s eight data center primary markets, according to real estate services firm CBRE.
The most common way to measure the size of a data center is by the power it consumes. And right now, there is more leasable data center space under construction as measured by power demand than there is total leasable data center space in metro Atlanta currently in use — the only major market in the country with such high demand, CBRE said.
Proponents say the rapid increase in data center development is a needed investment in critical tech infrastructure, which powers more aspects of daily life with each passing year. But the mammoth size of these facilities and their strain on utility grids has sparked concern in communities that feel overwhelmed by encroaching server farms.
In neighboring Fayette County, QTS Data Centers is building one of the largest data center campuses in the world on a 615-acre site. The project will require enough electricity to power more than 1 million homes and prompted a recent protest over the impact overhead power lines would have on its neighbors, which was documented in a Sunday article by Bloomberg.
Credit: Fayette County Citizen
Credit: Fayette County Citizen
The Stonewall Tell Road project site in South Fulton will need to be rezoned following the state’s infrastructure review. The filing estimates the data center campus could be complete by 2033.
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