Douglas County commissioners voted 4 to 1 on July 7, 2026 to deny a rezoning request for a 700 acre data center campus proposed by EdgeConneX near Villa Rica, along the Interstate 20 and Liberty Road corridor. The plan called for approximately 4.4 million square feet of facility space. The vote marked the second denial of a large campus proposal in the county within seven months.
Douglas County already hosts significant hyperscale capacity. A Microsoft campus in Douglasville began phase one construction in 2024 with four technology facilities of 245,000 square feet each on a 160 acre parcel at 1601 North River Road, and that phase was scheduled for completion in 2026. Microsoft designated Fulton and Douglas counties as the location for its next United States datacenter region.
The rejection reflects a shift in local land use politics across the Atlanta metro. In southern Fulton County, resident groups have organized against new campus proposals, citing water use, noise, transmission line routing, and the ratio of tax base gain to permanent job creation.
Other metro area projects remain in motion. T5 has filed to develop a campus outside Atlanta, the Microsoft Palmetto facility in Fulton County is under construction with completion targeted for 2028, and Equinix has an Atlanta East expansion in Henry County carrying roughly 240 megawatts of planned capacity.
Georgia has drawn heavy data center construction spending as AI infrastructure buildouts accelerated, and county commissions now function as the primary approval gate.
Source: DataCenterDynamics - https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/t5-files-to-develop-data-center-campus-outside-atlanta-georgia/