A proposed data center could be coming to Hall County.
The Hall County Planning Commission is set to hear an application for the center on O’Kelly Road off of Candler Road, although the applicant has requested for it to be tabled until the Sept. 15 meeting.
The application by Project Turbo LLC — based on Thompson Bridge Road — is on roughly 119-acres of land at 2400 O’Kelly Road.
It’s also a two-fold application for a special use permit and to rezone the property from planned industrial development to light industrial.
The current property owner is Crossroads Properties B, Inc. — based out of Cumming — a subsidiary of Ampro Products, Inc., a poultry recycler.
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 works with industrial real estate at Avison Young, a Canadian-based real estate company with an Atlanta office.
Avison Young recently published an article about data centers, claiming that the “rapid proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI), spatial technologies and other digital innovations is poised to revolutionize the global electricity market. As these technologies continue to advance, energy demand is expected to double by 2026 and triple by 2030…”
They included that information to posit that data centers are in demand.
It is important to note that there is no word in planning commission documents as to what the data center will specifically be used for, or for what company.
In the project narrative submitted on July 3 of this year, the applicants wrote that the “location and proposed Industrial use are consistent with Hall County’s Comprehensive Plan’s designation as an Employment Corridor.”
The applicants also wrote that data centers are critical digital infrastructure that serve as the “backbone” for the internet, online banking, cloud-based services, and other uses.
