Shadowbox Studios and affiliated real estate company Henrico 183 have asked a Georgia judge to strike down DeKalb County's moratorium on data centers, according to a lawsuit filed Aug. 5 in DeKalb County Superior Court.
The companies say they have spent more than $30 million preparing a data center on a nearly 200-acre site at 3600 International Park Drive in south DeKalb. The complaint argues the moratorium, now more than a year old, has cut the property's value by $200 million. It asks the court to declare the freeze invalid and seeks compensation and attorney fees.
The property sits south of the main Shadowbox campus at 1415 Constitution Road, a roughly 100-acre site with nine sound stages and several support buildings. Henrico purchased the International Park Drive acreage in 2021 to expand studio operations, and the county issued a land disturbance permit for a film studio in 2022. Demand for studio space later softened, and the owners began studying a data center alongside the studio project.
Between June 2023 and February 2025, county planning staff told the companies in writing that data centers would be treated as a communication utility or a warehouse under the site's light industrial zoning, the complaint states. Planning officials have since said those letters carried no legal force. In 2024 the owners requested 651 megawatts of service from Georgia Power for the site.
DeKalb commissioners approved the moratorium on a 4-3 vote in July 2025 and voted in July to extend it through March 30, 2027. A county spokesperson declined to comment on pending litigation. A Zoning Board of Appeals hearing on the matter is set for Sept. 9.
Source: Atlanta News First - https://www.atlantanewsfirst.com/2026/08/13/dekalb-county-sued-over-moratorium-new-data-centers/