A developer is eyeing nearly 100 acres west of Atlanta for its first data center campus in Georgia, aiming to join one of the country’s fastest-growing hubs for storing our digital lives.
Denver-based Vantage Data Centers is pursuing a 1.7-million-square-foot data center complex in Douglasville, according to recently filed state paperwork. The three-building project along Riverside Parkway would join several large data center operations in Douglas County, an area home to large facilities by Google, Microsoft and Switch.
Effectively giant warehouses filled with rows of computer equipment, data centers have become one of the hottest uses for industrial land over the past few years. Real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield found data center space in the U.S. has more than doubled over the past five years, increasing 139%. Atlanta has emerged as one of the country’s six top data center markets, which accounted for 72% of development in the sector last year.
HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Despite recent rises in inflation, interest rates and other economic headwinds, Cushman & Wakefield’s Jacob Albers, head of alternatives insights, said data center development remains resilient.
“In economic turmoil, you’re not dependent on people going into an office,” he told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “You’re not dependent upon any economic trend besides the usage of data.”
For decades, northern Virginia has served as the preeminent market for data storage farms, stowing military files, data for government departments and large online companies. Albers said rising demand for land in the Washington, D.C. area combined with a stressed power grid prompted developers to look elsewhere, often finding the Atlanta area as a willing host.
Douglas County has been especially welcoming to data centers, Douglasville spokesperson Jason Post said. He said the county and its cities began recruiting data centers to balance its existing warehousing and manufacturing industries, but the resulting cluster has bred more demand.
“The combination of our location, being so close to Atlanta and Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport — and the fact that we still have the space available to accommodate this type of development, makes us a prime location for these projects,” Post said.
The city doesn’t have an estimate on the economic impact or number of jobs Vantage’s project will generate. Post added that the city did not offer any financial incentives to attract the project.
Vantage operates or is building more than 26 data center campuses across the world and aims to increase that count by expanding into Douglasville. It applied to rezone roughly 95 acres for its development, according to a recent Development of Regional Impact filing, a state application required for gigantic projects that will affect more than just the city or county where the project is located.
Vantage expects to finish the project by the end of 2025.
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