Veteran Warehouse Developer Turning To Data Centers With New Firm
After years of developing warehouses across the Southeast, Stan Conway is shifting focus with a new company.
Conway, a former executive vice president at Majestic Realty Co., has founded RSC Investment Management, a development firm that is launching with a massive data center project near Atlanta.
RSC is pursuing a 1.9M SF data center project in South Fulton, according to an application with the Georgia Department of Community Affairs, which evaluates developments that will have a regional impact on infrastructure.
The project, called Stonewall Tell Data Center, would rise on a 59-acre parcel south of South Fulton Parkway and east of Stonewall Tell Road, according to the application, across from an Amazon distribution center.
Conway, who left Majestic earlier this year, declined to comment.
His new firm is entering an increasingly crowded field in Metro Atlanta as data center operators shift focus away from the typical hot spot of Northern Virginia to other markets. By the middle of this year, developers were underway with 1.3 megawatts of new data center capacity, a 76% increase from the second half of 2023, according to a CBRE report.
Metro Atlanta's data center inventory is set to more than double based on its construction pipeline, with overall inventory up 118% since 2020.
Edged Energy, DataBank and DC Blox are all building new data center campuses in the metro area. In October, Strategic Real Estate Partners applied to develop a 2.1M SF data center campus on more than 300 acres in Palmetto, near where Microsoft is planning a $500M data center complex.
After buying 430 acres in Covington in January, Amazon purchased another 118 acres in Douglas County in October through its data service subsidiary for $37M.
The deluge of new projects means Metro Atlanta is on track to become the second-largest data center market in the U.S., according to CBRE.
But developers are increasingly meeting municipal resistance.
This past summer, Atlanta instituted a data center development ban on sites surrounding the Atlanta BeltLine, the 22-mile pedestrian path that has become a magnet for new and revitalized real estate projects. In May, the state legislature passed a bill to pause a sales and use tax break until 2026, although Gov. Brian Kemp vetoed the pause.
If Conway’s project gets rezoning approval, the firm expects to deliver the campus by 2033, according to the application.
