Extra chairs were being pulled out prior to a town hall Wednesday night for a proposed data center in Hall County.
That’s due to the roughly 100 concerned and inquisitive citizens that attended the meeting, ready to ask questions to the co-owners of Project Turbo, LLC who are proposing a 900,000-square-feet data center on roughly 119-acres of land off of O’Kelly Road.
The centers would actually be three buildings at roughly 300,000-square-feet each. There is no word yet on who would occupy the centers once completed, which was a concern for residents.
“It’s taking a bunch of our resources from our community, it’s not providing any opportunities for us … I mean there’s zero benefit for a lot of loss for this project,” one citizen told AccessWDUN before the meeting.
Another resident said they were concerned about power and water usage.
“I just want to make sure … we’re all aware and we’re all on the same page of what the impact is going to be to Gainesville,” she said.
Artificial intelligence (AI) was top of mind for another resident.
“I have a little bit of a concern about the relationship to how a lot of these AI companies are being invested in and then how it affects local power companies,” he said.
The developers
The two listed organizers of Project Turbo are Cameron Grogan and Christopher Hoag.
Grogan is the owner of Atlanta-based Williams Brothers Development, who also built the luxury apartment complex Allora Gainesville.
Grogan also has experience in data centers, having recently built one in Greensboro, North Carolina with another on the way in Burlington, North Carolina.
Hoag fielded dozens of questions from concerned citizens, answering questions regarding water and power usage.
“We have about three to five clients,” Hoag told AccessWDUN before the meeting. “It’ll be AI or cloud [storage].”
Water
Water was a major concern for residents who attended the meeting. Hoag said that they wanted to mirror a center in Atlanta that uses a “closed-loop” system.
“That’s a zero water use design,” Hoag said. “It’s a closed-loop marginal evaporative loss.”
During the meeting, Hoag said they would use approximately 225,000 gallons-per-day.
Hoag noted during the meeting that a residential development Rabbittown will utilize roughly 475,000 gallons-per-day.
“I think it’s going to mess with the water supply and create pollution,” a concerned citizen told AccessWDUN before the meeting. “I don’t even know who’s profiting off of this or how it will benefit the City of Gainesville.”
Hoag said that water usage is for the initial set up and for any fire emergencies, although some citizens noted that for data centers the fire safety uses oxygen reduction systems and should not need water.
Citizens also noted they originally requested for 500,000 gallons-per-day but that was not approved from the City of Gainesville.
The Environmental and Energy Study Institute released a study earlier this year that a medium-sized data center can consume up to 110-million gallons-per-year. This center would be considered “large” at over 100,000-square-feet and consume nearly 82-million gallons-per-year based off of the per-day figure.
Power
The site would actually be powered by Jackson EMC.
Hoag mentioned during the meeting that the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) approved a rule earlier this year that allows Georgia Power to charge new data centers for any upgrades to infrastructure that they need to protect ratepayers.
“We as the community will not be footing the bill when your company, or whoever is there, is taking over all power,” a citizen said during the meeting. “Every data center that has gone up so far, their electricity bills have gone up like 278%.”
Some citizens brought up the fact that the PSC does not regulate the electric membership corporations, only Georgia Power. In response, Hoag said that the EMCs generally follow Georgia Power’s lead on these matters.
“I do not want to see our community members have to be burdened with that, as well as paying double utilities for power,” another citizen told AccessWDUN. “If there’s a drought, then where’s the water priority?”
Hoag told citizens that the expected power capacity of the project is between 400 and 500 megawatts.
Recommendations from Planning Commission before suspension
The Hall County Planning Commission recommended approval earlier this month with 10 conditions.
Those conditions mostly included constructing a cul-de-sac at the end of O’Kelly Road and continuous noise restrictions.
It is important to note that the Planning Commission was suspended the very next day for allegedly holding a secret meeting without public notice, agenda, or meeting minutes in September following a complaint filed by Hall County citizen Jodi White.
The Board of Commissioners held a work session meeting regarding the data center on Tuesday, with the applicant submitting revisions beforehand.
Poole said he would table the proposal until there was more information and wants a site visit set up with an already-existing data center in Alpharetta.
Poole clarified he wants to see the largest water and power users in the county and what they pay in taxes as a reference.
A county staffer told Poole that the applicant can provide a virtual site tour, to which Poole started shaking his head “no,” saying they want to go on a physical tour.
Other nearby data centers
The commission also mentioned wanting to see data on already-existing data centers in Suwanee. There’s a campus with three data centers — two are run by QTS Data Centers and the other is run by Server Farm Realty.
The combined square-footage of the similar three-data center corridor is 914,900-square-feet, comparable to this proposal.
It’s estimated that the three combined use 209.1-million gallons of water per-year, almost two-and-a-half-times this proposal.
As for all of Georgia, non-profit Science for Georgia estimates that there are 97 data centers in the state, taking up roughly 6,500 megawatts of electricity and using 13-billion gallons of water per-year.
The electricity figure is equivalent to about 6.3-million homes. There are roughly 4.6-million homes in all of Georgia. The water usage is equivalent to all of the Savannah metro-area.
Science for Georgia also notes in an info-graphic that data centers take up acres of land, but only provide roughly 30 jobs per-center after construction.
The developers claim that the center will create 40-60 full time workers initially, and claim that will climb to 100-150 at full build-out.
Thursday voting meeting
The voting meeting on Thursday will be to rezone the property from planned industrial development to light industrial, and a special use permit to build the data center.
Poole made mention at the work session on Tuesday that the likely outcome would be to table the proposal for a later date. The meeting will begin at 6 p.m. at the Hall County Government Center at 2875 Browns Bridge Road in Gainesville.
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