Amazon Data Center Arm Buys 118 Acres In Suburban Atlanta
There seems to be no slowing down the momentum of tech giants coming to Georgia to build data centers.
Amazon, through its Amazon Data Services subsidiary, has acquired 118 acres in Douglas County to the west of Atlanta for $37M, the Atlanta Business Chronicle reports.
Atlanta is the fastest-growing data center market in the country, with its construction pipeline more than tripling since the start of 2023, according to CBRE. Much of that growth is fueled by hyperscale users providing cloud computing services, such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Meta and Google.
The newest addition to Amazon's Atlanta-area portfolio is split into 10 parcels and was sold by local real estate firm Taylor & Mathis, the ABC reported. The cost breaks down to roughly $313K per acre, a “high price per acre for this facility at this time,” Databank CEO Alan Wexler told the ABC.
The price is a sign that the companies fueling the explosion of data center construction, and the surging power demand that comes with it, aren't backing off.
AWS in January purchased 430 acres in Covington, also presumably for a data center. Earlier this month, a developer filed plans for a 2M SF data center campus in Palmetto close to where Microsoft is planning a $500M data center, with potential to add to that development.
Amazon is typically mum about its data center development plans. A spokesperson declined to comment to Bisnow about this story.
The rapid pace of development has started to raise alarm bells for policymakers in the state who are concerned about the state of the power grid, as data centers — particularly the newest ones built to accommodate artificial intelligence — have increasingly high energy demands.
Local data center insiders at a Bisnow event this spring said two companies were looking to build a data center with gigawatt capacity — enough to power 870,000 homes for a year. Georgia Power has commitments from customers for 7.3 gigawatts of new power demand by the early 2030s, a figure that doubled in less than a year, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
