By a 3-2 vote, including Mayor Jonathan McCollar’s tiebreaker, Statesboro City Council on Tuesday evening approved a request from 4AM Development LLC to rezone its almost 27-acre site on Burkhalter Road for a two-story data center with roughly 230,000 square feet of floor space.

After District 5 Councilmember Shari Barr made a motion, seconded by District 4’s John Riggs, to deny the rezoning request from “R-4” residential to “O,” office and business district, District 1 member Tangie Johnson said she works in a facility that includes a data center – she meant at Georgia Southern University – and is not opposed to them. District 3 member Ginny Hendley joined in the “no” vote against denial, and with District 2 currently vacant, McCollar broke the tie to defeat that motion.

Then Johnson made the motion to approve with the one recommended condition, Hendley seconded, and McCollar broke the tie with a “yes” vote, approving the rezoning.

The limited-liability company owns the site on the edge of Statesboro’s city limits, and the LLC’s owner partners in turn are Bobby Bagwell of Augusta and Charles C. Way of Savannah. Mainly residential developers until now, they said they have no big artificial intelligence or information technology company – no Microsoft or Open AI – lined up to operate it. Instead, they said they have been talking to a couple of companies and hoped to secure one after the zoning approval was in hand.

Beyond the zoning change to “O” for office, the project will still face another hurdle in the city’s “special use” requirement of the city’s Data Center Ordinance, in effect since June 2. “O” is one of four non-residential zones that such centers, up to 50 acres and no larger, are allowed in, but only as special uses requiring a further hearing process and council approval.

Tuesday, citizens opposed or concern filled the council chamber and the second floor of City Hall to their 133-person fire code capacity, with others waiting downstairs and a crowd protested outside.

Supposed $1.2B project

Way has said that private investment in the project will depend on the ultimate design but would be “somewhere in the high hundreds of millions of dollars.” A “fiscal impact” analysis conducted by Economic Impact Group LLC for the Development Authority of Bulloch County, at the request of and funded by the developers, suggested a $1.2 billion total 10-year investment.

But the data center was projected to have only about 12 full-time employees and thus to create relatively low demand for public services. So the analysis projected 10-year “net benefits” in tax revenue versus expenses of more than $20 million each to the Statesboro city government, Bulloch County government and Bulloch County Schools.

However, the mayor and council faced an overflow crowd of people opposed to the project and the rezoning approval Tuesday evening. Concerns voiced by citizens during the hearing centered on noise, water usage, environmental impact and alleged conflict with the area’s Developing Neighborhood character area designation in the city’s Comprehensive Plan.

Some of the opposition’s concerns and comments will be reported in a separate story.

Further requirements

Under the June 2 city law, which was enacted by a 3-1 council vote at that time, 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. It is also required to have a water management plan.

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.

The 4AM Development LLC developers have already submitted the “fiscal impact” report completed in May and a water feasibility management plan, dated July 8.

The water management plan, prepared for the developers by the local engineering firm Thomas & Hutton. It projects a 6,000- to 10,0000-gallon closed-loop cooling system with a 1% loss rate, requiring 30 to 100 gallons per day of “makeup” water to replenish for evaporation and other losses. But the average daily “domestic” need, such as for employee restrooms, is projected at 300 gpd, for total average daily cooling and domestic consumption of 330-400 gpd, and a peak total demand of 1,000 gallons per day, but a monthly average of 12,000 gallons a month.

However, the initial system fill-up was not included in those figures, but estimated separately, at 10,000 gallons, and added to the daily estimate for a total estimate of 156,000 gallons per year.

But the water management plan report contrasts this with a “residential equivalent demand” for a 240-unit housing development of 72,000 gallons per day, 2.16 million gallons a month, or 26.28 million gallons a year.

“This number represents approximately 170 times greater water demand than the anticipated yearly demand of the proposed data center development,” Thomas and Hutton’s report notes.

The 4AM Development owners purchased the tract from a Statesboro-based ownership group that had the land annexed into the city in January 2024 and rezoned to R-4 for high-density housing, up to 285 units. Both the proposed data center developers and some city staff members have presented as an “alternative use” that would use less water and produce much less traffic than the apartments.

Noise regulation

During the previous Statesboro Planning Commission hearing on the project Aug. 4, city Planning and Development Director Justin Williams noted that the developers had preliminary work done on a sound study. They found the noisy level near the existing Cottage Row housing development which borders the triangular shaped 26.94-acre parcel to the west and northwest, to be nearly 50 decibels from existing sources, such as traffic, Way said.

Required setback distances, planted buffers and the building’s design would limit sound emanating from the data center, the developers said, and further testing will be required.

The appointed Planning Commission had voted 5-1 to recommend approval of the rezoning with one condition, which had been recommended by city staff. 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.

Power usage

The concept plan included with the city staff report labeled the proposed two-story data center as having a 40- to 90-megawatt power requirement.

Way noted that the developers have applied to Georgia Power for 99 megawatts, as the maximum from the company’s transmission lines that border the property to the east and northeast. A 3/4-acre rectangle for a Georgia Power substation is sketched

on the data center parcel.

The site includes wetlands, still undergoing a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers review.