(The Center Square) – While communities across America are trying to lure large corporate data centers, one Georgia county on Tuesday rejected a proposal after neighborhood groups opposed it.
Commissioners in Monroe County, about 60 miles south of Atlanta, rejected a request to rezone about 900 acres near the town of Bolingbroke to allow a data center. Hundreds of residents turned out for the meeting to oppose the rezoning. The crowd was so large, commissioners moved Tuesday’s meeting to the school system’s Fine Arts Center, which can seat 1,200.
Bolingbroke is a quiet, pastoral community where homeowners have large lots, horses and cows.
“It’s like Mayberry,” Valli Berg, a local real estate agent, told The Center Square, referring to the mythical small town in the television show “The Andy Griffith Show.” “It would be irreversibly changed if the data center was approved.”
A center would have lowered home values and possibly strained local water and power supplies, she said.
“We bought here thinking it was going to be residential,” Berg said. “The data center is not only commercial but industrial. I wouldn’t buy a home in an industrial area.”
Another site in Monroe County on Rumble Road is also under consideration for a data center and has not sparked the same level of opposition.
“It is already kind of an industrial area,” Berg said. “Rumble Road doesn’t have a town name.”
In nearby Lamar County, however, the reaction from county commissioners to a possible data center had been different.
Amazon Web Services has reportedly purchased nearly 1,000 acres for a data center in an industrial park near Interstate 75.
“We recognize that industrial developments can impact surrounding properties, and we are committed to ensuring that this new project brings the minimal possible disruption to neighboring areas and Lamar County as a whole,” Lamar County Commission chairman Ryran Traylor said in a recent statement. “We look forward to engaging in productive discussions with Amazon as they further establish their presence in our community.”
