Not long ago it was common for office buildings to dedicate a few closets to store computer servers.
As the internet’s prominence grew and data storage needs increased, it made sense to cluster computer equipment inside giant warehouses, called data centers, to increase efficiency. Now, single-building computer storage farms are not enough, and data center campuses have only gotten larger, as epitomized by Georgia’s largest such proposal.
Early stage plans were submitted Tuesday for a 29-building data center campus in Columbia County, roughly 30 miles west of Augusta along I-20. A site map obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution shows six on-site substations to power the armada of computer storage warehouses. Combined, the buildings would encompass about 8 million square feet of space — more than four times the floor space of the Mall of Georgia.
The development proposal, called White Oak Technology Park, joins a burgeoning pipeline of similar data center campuses that comprise an unparalleled pipeline of projects across Georgia. Since 2023, the flurry of activity has made the Atlanta area’s data center market the hottest in the country, a trend that hasn’t slowed this year.
Credit: Courtesy of Columbia County
Credit: Courtesy of Columbia County
“There’s more demand than there are buildings today nationwide, and everyone saw the fertile ground that Georgia was able to provide for future development,” Mike Lash, senior vice president of CBRE’s data center solution team in Atlanta, has said. “We’ve seen a gold rush toward our area.”
Preliminary plans for White Oak Technology Park were unveiled in a Development of Regional Impact application, a state filing for large projects that triggers an infrastructure and traffic review. While scant on project specifics, the filing shows the data center campus is planned for a roughly 1,945-acre plot of county-owned land near Morris Callaway Road and Innovation Parkway.
Trammell Crow Co., a Dallas-based developer, filed the DRI application. The company has developed many industrial, office and residential projects throughout metro Atlanta, including the Science Square life sciences district at Georgia Tech and a proposed 30-story tower next to the Margaret Mitchell House in Midtown.
Trammell Crow declined to comment on the White Oak Technology Park filing.
The Economic Development Authority of Columbia County owns the data center project site and the adjacent White Oak Business Park, an industrial campus that features warehouses by Amazon and golf cart maker Club Car. The authority is a government entity that’s able to incentivize development through property tax breaks, which for data center campuses can sometimes be worth tens of millions of dollars.
Cheney Eldridge, the authority’s executive director, declined to comment on “any projects that we may or may not be working at this time.”
The DRI was triggered by a rezoning application to permit the data center development. Columbia County Commissioner Alison Couch wrote on Facebook that it “follows months of research, consultation and negotiations.” The entire campus would likely take a decade to build, according to the DRI.
The estimated value of the entire development wasn’t released, but similar data center proposals in Georgia are proposed as multibillion-dollar investments. Last week, an 8.7-million-square-foot proposal with 12 data centers in Bartow County was valued at $19 billion in its own DRI. That plan’s power needs were estimated at 1,830 megawatts, which is more electricity than the maximum output of one of Plant Vogtle’s two new nuclear reactors.
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.
It’s unclear whether any end users have been identified for White Oak Technology Park. More than a quarter of planned data center space — projects still in permitting and preconstruction phases — has been preleased, a nation-leading figure, according to data from Cushman & Wakefield.
While data centers can strain utility grids, proponents say they have minimal impacts on nearby roads and schools because they often employ only a few dozen workers per building. In addition, the expensive equipment housed within data centers can lead to significant tax revenues.
The tax implications of White Oak Technology Park were not included in the DRI, but Couch said it would be a boon for the suburban Augusta county.
“I have concluded this use of land offers extremely low overall impact to the surrounding area, while generating tremendous tax revenues in return,” Couch wrote on Facebook. “I believe this to be the best possible type of development on this property that we could hope for.”
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