SOCIAL CIRCLE, Ga. – In a series of unanimous zoning-related votes Tuesday, the Social Circle City Council cleared the way for full development of a data center complex planned eventually to occupy more than 450 acres along the southeast side of Fairplay Drive and Roy Malcom Road from Social Circle Parkway nearly to Hawkins Academy Road.
It is not clear exactly how many square feet of the buildings shown on developmental plans for the total acreage will be dedicated for use as data centers, but it appears that it will be more than 2 million square feet.
Plans shown in connection with Tuesday’s affirmative votes for annexation, rezoning, special-use permitting, and a future land use map amendment for 123 acres at 1402 Roy Malcom Road, the last piece of the puzzle for the proposed development, show two buildings, each covering nearly 250,000 square feet.
In November of last year, plans for a second tract approved then by the council for data center development showed several buildings, totaling nearly 1.5 million square feet, on a little more than 150 acres off Roy Malcom Road near Hawkins Academy Road.
The earliest action on the tracts came in September of last year, when the council took action clearing the way for industrial and commercial development on 181 acres along Fairplay Drive at Social Circle Parkway. Those plans showed 12 buildings, with a combined space of nearly 2.5 million square feet, split between industrial and retail development, with no clear indication how much of that space would be dedicated to data center usage.
The council was deadlocked on the September vote to allow a data center on the 181-acre tract, with Councilwoman Traysa Price and Councilman Steve Shelton voting in favor of the move, and Councilmen Tyson Jackson and Nathan Boyd (who opted not to seek reelection last year and is no longer on the council) opposing it. Mayor David Keener cast the tie-breaking vote to allow data center development on the tract.
The November vote on the tract along Roy Malcom Road near Hawkins Academy Road was similarly dramatic, with Price and Shelton providing a series of affirmative votes as Jackson cast a set of votes against the proposal. Boyd did not attend the November meeting.
There was no such drama at Tuesday’s council meeting. In a quick succession of 3-0 votes -- Jackson arrived late for the meeting, in work clothes, and did not cast any votes -- Shelton, Price and newly elected Councilman Adam Conavay approved rezoning from the current rural residential classification to the city’s light industrial classification.
The three councilmembers also approved special-use permitting, a future land use map amendment and annexation for the 123 acres at 1402 Roy Malcom Road.
Officials in Walton County, in which the tract is located – Social Circle straddles the Walton County and Newton County lines – have not raised any objection to the annexation.
Tuesday’s approval of the set of zoning actions for the acreage at 1402 Roy Malcom Road represented the first such moves by the Social Circle City Council since the Jan. 27 end of a moratorium on consideration of data center requests.
The moratorium was put in place late last year by the council as the city found itself fielding numerous data center rezoning, annexation and special-use requests. Among other issues of concerns to Social Circle and other local governments across the United States, data centers can be prodigious users of water and electricity, and do not necessarily provide significant employment opportunities.
Social Circle’s moratorium ended when the council approved a set of comprehensive new regulations for data centers. Among those new regulations are strict noise and lighting limits, requiring periodic emergency drills in coordination with local emergency responders, setting time limits on special-use permitting in the absence of construction progress, and requiring special-use permitting even when a data center is proposed for an area zoned for heavy industrial use, where such facilities had previously been allowed outright.
In addition to those regulations, the approvals granted Tuesday for the 1402 Roy Malcom Road site carry other conditions. Under terms of the council’s Tuesday decisions, buildings are limited to a single story, there shall be no hidden costs to the city for any utilities, and the project developer will be required to make improvements to Roy Malcom Road, which City Manager Eric Taylor said Tuesday is “nothing more than a country road right now.”
Taylor went on to tell Scott Greene of Thomas & Hutton -- an engineering and design consulting firm with offices in Atlanta that offers comprehensive data center design and planning services that is representing the owner of the 1402 Roy Malcom Road acreage -- that work on the road is “probably going to go beyond just surfacing.”
Thomas & Hutton has previously indicated that, at least regarding the acreage at 1402 Roy Malcom Road, a data center operator has been identified, and construction could start as soon as fall of this year.
