Developers are seeking a zoning change to build a two-story data center, with about 115,000 square feet of area per floor, on an almost 27-acre site just inside Statesboro’s city limits on Burkhalter Road.
A company called 4AM Development LLC, which owns the property, is the applicant for the change from an “R-4” high-density residential zoning district to an “O,” or office and business district, for the 26.94-acre parcel. With John Paul Moore of the civil engineering firm Thomas & Hutton listed as agent, this request appears as the fifth of five items on the agenda for the Statesboro Planning Commission’s 5 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 4 regular meeting.
The Planning Commission is an appointed seven-member citizen panel expected to make a recommendation. But as a zoning map amendment, the change would require a vote of the elected City Council to grant or deny. Public notice signs on the Burkhalter Road frontage already announce a City Council hearing for the 5:30 p.m. Aug. 18 meeting, as well as this Tuesday’s planning board hearing.
Zoning, not permit
Also, under the Data Center Ordinance enacted by City Council on a 3-1 vote June 2, a special use permit would be required, as data centers are not an automatically allowed use, or “use by right” in any zone. Data centers occupying sites of 50 acres or less may be allowed in highway-oriented commercial, or HOC; light industrial, or LI; mixed-use, or MX; and office, or O, zoning districts.
“The Special Use Permit application shall be separate from the Zoning Map Amendment,” is the last note in the “mitigating factors” section of the report filed by the city Planning and Development Department staff on the zoning change request.
Under the ordinance, any data center is required to use a closed-loop system for cooling and city water and wastewater connections, not a private well or septic system. Ambient noise limits at the property line are to be enforced with testing around a roughly 50-decibel level. An economic impact report showing positive results for the community and a decommissioning plan for eventual shutdown are required.
Several of those things would be considerations for the separate, special use permit process.
But the zoning application report does provide some basic information on the cooling system, proposed water usage and some other aspects.
“The intended data center proposes a water-based cooling system utilizing a closed-loop system,” is another of the “mitigating factors” statements.
That section also states that the applicant has provided a water management plan that indicates an average daily “makeup” water usage, to replenish losses from the closed-loop cooling system, of 30 to 100 gallons per day.
The would-be developers further predict peak daily demand for both cooling and “domestic” use (such as for restrooms) of 1,000 gallons per day, but a “projected monthly average” of 12,000 gpd, according to the staff report summary.
Under the city’s Unified Development Code, “the site is required to provide additional setbacks, buffers and screening adjacent to residential use and other non-residential uses,” the report also notes.
Location, location …
The parcel of land, with the address 6539 Burkhalter Road, has a mainly triangular shape, with the longest side being the Burkhalter frontage to the southeast. A tree-covered western corner meets the road beside the end of the established Cottage Row housing development, which in turn is behind the Stay Plus Extended Stay Suites hotel from the Fair Road, or State Route 67, intersection.
The western side of the triangular property extends behind the Cottage Row neighborhood to the point of the triangle at a small wooded area behind Aspen Heights, and leg of the property extends off the point of the triangle as a narrow, wooded area between Aspen Heights and an existing solar power panel farm.
The north-to-northeast side of the triangular acreage follows the boundary of the solar farm, and existing Georgia Power transmission lines, almost back to Burkhalter.
Currently just one structure, described in the city report as “a historic house … circa 1930,” is on the property, visible at the Burkhalter Road address. The property was previously a farm.
Power and plan
A concept plan included with the report labels the proposed two-story data center as having a 40- to 90-megawatt power requirement. Again, the building would occupy roughly 115,000 square feet of ground but stack two stories for apparently about 230,000 square feet of floor space.
In concept, a 32,000-square-foot, or roughly three-fourths of an acre, rectangle inside the eastern corner of the triangular tract is designated for a Georgia Power substation to connect with the existing transmission lines.
A proposed access road for the data center is drawn with an entrance from Burkhalter Road near the existing house. The access road, 30 feet wide, is shown forming a loop around the data center building, with the road and parking spaces inside the loop on the west side adding to the setback from Cottage Row housing.
A detention pond, shown as a smaller triangle with rounded corners, is proposed in the western, or back, corner of the property, where it would be between the loop road and the setbacks from Cottage Row and Aspen Heights.
4AM … who?
The zoning change applicant, 4AM Development LLC, has owned the land and house since Aug. 29, 2025, when it was transferred from Habersham Development Group LLC for zero dollars, according to prior-sale information on the Bulloch County Board of Tax Assessors database.
A Georgia limited-liability company, 4 AM Development, registered with the state since Dec. 15, 2023, has a principal office address at Appling, Georgia, in Columbia County near Augusta, and its registered agent, Darren Meadows, has an Augusta address. Bobby Bagwell signed as an authorizing member some years, as seen in documents on the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office database.
Habersham Development Group had purchased the property Jan. 10, 2025, reportedly for about $2.75 million, from Randy Childs and others, who had received it by zero-dollar transfer the day before from Four Guys Development LLC, according to the assessors’ database.
Four Guys Development was the limited liability company, with local investors, that successfully requested the city’s annexation of this 26.94-acre parcel in January 2024. At that time, it was proposed to become a “cottage court” subdivision for about 87 small-lot, single-family homes and immediately rezoned to R-4 high-density residential.
Zoning matters
One or more city staff members, in their report on the 4AM Development request, noted that Statesboro’s 2024 Comprehensive Master Plan shows this property as part of a “Developing Neighborhood” area. After stating that “neighborhood serving commercial development” can also be located in such areas, the report describes “O,” or office and business district, as “compatible zoning for this area.”
The property does contain some wetlands, and is currently under review by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for possible impacts of the project, the city report notes.
Nothing in that preliminary report for zoning indicates how many people the data center might employ. But the report repeatedly suggests that the data center would produce less traffic than would have been created by R-4 high-density housing.
One standard question in the zoning analysis asked if the property to be rezoned has “a reasonable economic use as currently zoned.”
The city staff answered in writing, “Analysis: Yes, however, the previous proposed (multi-family housing) would add additional traffic to already congested intersection of Burkhalter Road, Cawana Road and Fair Road.”
A further note in the “mitigating factors” section states: “The traffic would be substantially less compared to the previous multi-family project. The traffic study for that project was provided by the applicant.”
The staff is recommending conditional approval of the rezoning request with just one condition. That condition would require 4AM Development LLC to provide a 10-foot-wide strip of property along the Burkhalter Road frontage to the city for roadway improvements in accordance with the “previously approved” traffic analysis.
Not Bulloch’s rules
This property, like the rest of Statesboro, is within Bulloch County. But since being annexed by the city two and a half years ago, it is subject to the city’s zoning rules and jurisdiction, not the county’s.
The city and county have taken dramatically different tacks in regard to data centers. In early May, the Bulloch County Board of Commissioners extended a previous 90-day moratorium against permitting any data centers in the county unincorporated area to Dec. 31. Commissioners also instructed staff to begin the process for prohibiting data centers outright in the county jurisdiction.
Recently voted forward by the county Planning and Zoning Commission (not to be confused with the city board), an amendment designed to accomplish that and also scrub provisions for “crypto-mining operations” from county ordinances is on the agenda for the Board of Commissioners 5:30 p.m. Tuesday meeting.
Nor Effingham’s scale
With a proposed 27-acre site and apparently up to 90-megawatt power consumption, the proposed Burkhalter Road data center is also on a much different scale that OpenAI’s recently announced 1,400-acre data center campus planned for the Savannah Gateway Industrial Hub in Effingham County. OpenAI has reportedly contracted with Georgia Power for 3.2 gigawatts (in other words 3,200 megawatts) of power for that project.