The proposal by 4AM Development LLC to place a two-story, roughly 230,000-square-foot data center on Burkhalter Road at the edge of Statesboro grew out of the developers’ desire for a change of plans away from building more housing units in a rapidly building, high-traffic area.

With more jobs in construction at first but only 10 to 15 lasting jobs in its operating phase, the data center is projected to produce far less traffic, over the long run, than the previously proposed 240- to 285-unit housing complex. It would also, according to a fiscal impact study the developers requested, produce far higher return of tax revenue with lower costs for public services for the city, county and school system.

Of course, the data center is also expected to yield higher profits for the developers, as they acknowledge.

“From a general market perspective, we knew that there was a demand for them, that there was a general shortage of computing power in America, and that this was something that would be financially viable and would be more financially beneficial to us than the apartments,” Charles C. Way told the Statesboro Herald.

Way, from Savannah, and Bobby Bagwell, from Appling near Augusta, sat down with the reporter and the Herald’s editor for a conversational interview Sept 22. Bagwell and Way are the two publicly identified owners, or “face people” as Bagwell put it, of 4AM Development LLC. They said there are two other investors in the limited liability company, but that all four are otherwise residential developers.

Although they had talked to reporters after some city meetings, this was Bagwell and Way’s first arranged news media interview, and they said they were hoping to get some accurate information out in public to counteract “so much misinformation” that was circulating. This was after Statesboro City Council, by a 3-2 vote with the mayor’s tiebreaker Aug. 18, approved their request to rezone 4AM Development’s almost 27-acre site from a previous “R-4” high-density residential classification to “O” for office and business. Under the city’s Technological Facilities and Data Centers Ordinance, enacted by a 3-1 council vote June 2 , “O” is one of four zoning classifications in which a data center could be allowed, but only as a “special use.”

That means the developers must fulfill certain specific requirements and obtain further City Council approval.

The recent interview with the developers also followed the filing, on Sept. 17, of a legal challenge in Bulloch County Superior Court by the nonprofit organization Coastal Communities United and 11 individual citizens seeking to have the rezoning reversed and the data center’s permitting halted. The Statesboro Herald will also be reporting further on that suit and a separate petition drive being mounted by people opposed to the data center, as well as the developers’ plans and statements.

Residential roots

“Everyone in our group is primarily a residential developer and has been,” said Way. “The data center thing is something that we, I don't want to say stumbled across, necessarily, but … we need to probably explain that because that's something that has been largely misconstrued.”

So the developers explained how the project evolved from their original purchase of the 26.94-acre site at 6539 Burkhalter Road as a residential property to the data center plan. Some details were reported in an Aug. 4 Statesboro Herald story, based on their application then pending with the city Planning Commission and information from the Bulloch County Board of Tax Assessors database and Georgia Secretary of State’s Office corporate filings.

The current 4AM Development LLC has owned the land and a house that is on it since Aug. 29, 2025, when it was transferred to 4AM from Habersham Development Group LLC for zero dollars. Habersham Development Group, Way’s Savannah-based company, had purchased the property Jan. 10, 2025, for about $2.75 million according to the tax office record, from Randy Childs and others, who had received it by zero-dollar transfer the day before from Four Guys Development LLC.

Not those 4 Guys

Four Guys Development was the limited liability company, with Statesboro-based investors, that successfully requested the city’s annexation of this 26.94-acre parcel in January 2024. Bagwell and Way were not involved in the Four Guys group, which initially had the property rezoned to R-4 residential when it was annexed.

Habersham Development Group, which Way referred to as a “single-owner” limited liability company, of which he is the owner, bought the property at “market rate,” but with Bagwell as an intended investor.

“Bobby and I have done deals before where one of us will use our LLC to purchase property and run the project, and then we just pay a partnership out at the end of it,” Way said. “So this started as a Habersham Development project. At some point, we created a special-purpose entity, which happens all the time in real estate.”

No ‘shell company’

It is true that many projects submitted to the city and county for permits come from an LLC created for just that project, or undertaking one project at a time. In this case, the special-purpose company is 4AM Development LLC.

“It's not hiding anything,” Way continued. “It's not a shell company. It's just taking Bobby's LLC interest and my LLC interest and bringing them together.”

At first, Bagwell and Way and their fellow 4AM Development investors moved forward with planning for an apartment or cottage-court neighborhood, based on the R-4 zoning the previous owners had obtained. They spent about six months on engineering for the housing complex and seeking permits for site plans. Bagwell and Way attended a Right Start meeting about planning and permitting for the residential project with a city staff development team in June 2025.

But by last fall, local real estate agents and city and county officials were noticing how very many homes and apartments were being built on the edges of Statesboro, especially around the Burkhalter Road corridor.

“So we were fully intending to fulfill that project, and market conditions simply softened and we started looking at it going, ‘Is this really the best use for the property? We need to sit and wait,’” Way recalled. “And … Bobby has a close friend from college who worked for Georgia Power.”

Georgia Power input

The idea of a data center came up in casual conversation at first, the developers said, and when they asked some Georgia Power representatives, they said it was feasible.

“We brought it up to the city, and they said, we don't really know what a data center is, and we don't really have anything like that in our ordinance,” Bagwell said. “And we said, well, if you're open to it, let us know. We're learning about it too.”

That is when city officials or staff members contacted Benjy Thompson, CEO of the Development Authority of Bulloch County, who planned what these developers called “the field trip to Atlanta.” The Herald reported it as an “exploratory trip” that city officials took Jan. 22 to visit several data centers in the metro area and have related discussions. The newspaper’s report came nearly a month later, after Statesboro Planning and Development Director Justin Williams gave a slideshow presentation during a February mayor-and-council work session.

Williams, as well as the city manager and assistant city manager, Mayor Jonathan McCollar and at least two council members, had gone on the field trip. Besides visiting data centers, they met with Thompson and Georgia Power staff at the company’s Georgia Experience Center. Bagwell and Way were also along on that trip, as they and city officials have since acknowledged.

“To be clear, we did not arrange the field trip, nor did we set the agenda for it, nor did we dictate the sites that were visited. That was the city. That was Benjy Thompson. …,” Way said. “We were not leading the meeting. It was not a propaganda campaign on our part. We went there, again, as much for us to learn as it was for the city to learn. I can guarantee you we learned as much on that visit as the city did.”

The group visited Meta’s “hyperscale” data center in the Stanton Springs Industrial Park near Social Circle, with buildings covering 970,000 square feet on a 285-acre tract of land.

They also visited two smaller “edge” data centers in or near Alpharetta, one measuring 102,100 square feet in one building, another encompassing 184,553 square feet in four buildings.

With input from City Council members after the February work session, Statesboro city staff wrote a data center ordinance that prohibits “hyperscale” facilities on tracts larger than 50 acres but allows smaller centers that meet requirements including noise limits and testing, a water use study and a closed-loop cooling system with city-supplied water, as well as final council approval. That was the ordinance passed by the council on June 2.

LOCI study

Meanwhile, 4AM Development had requested and funded the fiscal impact analysis, obtained by the Development Authority of Bulloch County, or DABC, from Economic Impact Group LLC, based at Flowery Branch, using the trademarked LOCI model and software. As previously reported, that study forecast that the proposed data center could involve 10-year capital investments totaling $1.2 billion by the developers and a yet-to-be-determined end user or operating company.

With very few households expected to be added for the approximately 12 long-term employees, the study projected net tax revenue gains, cumulative over 10 years, of $28.7 million for the Bulloch County government, $26.2 million for Bulloch County Schools and $21.7 million for the Statesboro city government.

A future story will relate what the developers say about their application to Georgia Power for an up-to 99-megawatt electrical supply for the site, and about some of the objections from neighbors.