Statesboro’s city Planning Commission, by a 5-1 vote Tuesday evening, recommended conditional approval of a zoning change sought by developers planning to place 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.

Now the rezoning request is set to go before City Council for a hearing during the council’s 5:30 p.m. Aug. 18 meeting. The Planning Commission is an appointed panel which could only make a recommendation in this. As a zoning map amendment, the change requires a vote of the elected City Council to grant or deny.

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. John Paul Moore of the civil engineering firm Thomas & Hutton was listed as agent. But two 4AM Development owners, Bobby Bagwell, a Georgia Southern graduate who lives in the Augusta area, and Charles C. Way of Savannah, spoke for the request, which was the last of five items on the Planning Commission’s 5 p.m. Aug. 4 agenda.

The board also heard from several residents of the area who are opposed to the project and expressed concerns about noise levels, water and electricity usage and fears about harm to the environment.

After also hearing from Bagwell and Way and receiving the staff recommendation, board member Logan Josey made the motion to recommend approval with the one condition, Vice Chair Len Fatica seconded, and Chair Cathy Dixon cast the one “no” vote, with member Joseph Folsom absent.

Zoning, not permit

As Dixon and city Planning and Development Director Justin Wiliams emphasized, the planning board’s vote was only a recommendation in regard to the zoning, and not a special use permit.

Under the Data Center Ordinance enacted by City Council on a 3-1 vote June 2, a special use permit would also 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,” was 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.

If City Council approves the rezoning, those things will be considerations for the separate, special use permit process.

But the zoning application report did 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,” was another of the “mitigating factors” statements.

That section also stated 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. That last number may have included water volume from an annual refilling of the system or be subject to revision, according to information heard at Tuesday’s hearing.

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 staff report also noted.

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 zoning centers outright in the county jurisdiction.

The county Planning and Zoning Commission (not to be confused with the city board) recently recommended an amendment designed to accomplish that and also scrub provisions for “crypto-mining operations” from county ordinances. But the Board of Commissioners during their 5:30 p.m. Tuesday meeting voted 3-2 to table the amendment to a future meeting.

Nor Effingham’s scale

With a proposed 27-acre site and apparently up to 99-megawatt power consumption, the proposed Burkhalter Road data center is also on a much smaller 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.