Gwinnett County has seven data centers within its borders, and one of them is undergoing an expansion, according to county planning officials cited by the Gwinnett Daily Post. Most of the facilities sit in Norcross and Suwanee along the I-85 corridor.
Matt Elder, the county's deputy director of planning and development, told residents at a town hall meeting in Lawrenceville that all seven are existing, operating facilities that have been in place for some time. All are located in industrial parks, and none are in residential areas. Elder said no additional data centers are in the county's pipeline for now.
The facilities serve purposes that range from internet technology services to cryptocurrency mining. Several are colocation centers that rent server space to other companies. The largest single data center in the county covers 205,000 square feet, while the QTS campus in Suwanee totals about 361,000 square feet. Company profiles describe some of the sites as AI capable. None approach the size of Google's 1 million-square-foot facility in Douglas County or the roughly 2.5 million square feet planned for Meta's campus in Newton County.
Elder said none of the Gwinnett data centers receive tax abatements or other incentives. Georgia law offers a sales and use tax exemption on construction materials, computer hardware and electricity infrastructure for qualifying data centers, with required investments of between $25 million and $250 million depending on location. The state recently passed Virginia as the leading builder of data centers.
Georgia Power spokesman Joshua Peacock said the utility's contracts with data centers protect residential customers, and he pointed to agreements with OpenAI and Google that support upgrades at the state's nuclear plants.
Source: Gwinnett Daily Post - https://www.gwinnettdailypost.com/local/georgia-tops-nation-for-data-center-construction-but-relatively-few-in-gwinnett/article_b5985153-260e-4f8a-9d01-23badd9d4168.html