Hampton officials have approved a conditional use permit for what will become the first data center in Henry County. The 133-acre property is located north of Georgia 20 at McDonough Street. It is part of the larger Henderson Farms project.
Henderson Farms is a 900-acre mixed-use development proposed and rezoned in 2008, but never built due to the Great Recession. It is slowly starting to develop now.
Data Center in Hampton
Southeast Property Holdings, LLC applied for a conditional use permit to permit a data center campus on 133 acres in Hampton. The property, located north of Georgia 20 at McDonough Street, has an existing mixed-use zoning. The data center campus is a permitted use within the MU zoning with an approved conditional use permit.
The Hampton council considered the conditional use permit request at their February and March meetings. The city of Hampton requires their council to consider and vote on items twice for final approval. The council passed the second and final reading by a 5-0 vote (Councilman Turner) absent on Tuesday, March 25, 2025.
The data center campus is planned to consist of three buildings, each measuring 195,000 square feet, and an electrical substation. According to the city planning & zoning staff report, the applicant is in discussions with the University of Georgia to develop a hydroponic farm and training facility within the campus.
The subject property has an existing electrical transmission line onsite. The developer will be responsible for negotiating the power supply for the site. Georgia allows large-scale projects, such as a data center, to select which energy provider they work with. The data center will use “a fraction of energy and water that a traditional data center requires,” according to the applicant’s representation in the city staff report. The exact megawatts of planned energy use were not mentioned in the staff report.
Zoning Conditions
The city’s conditions require the developer to preserve at least 100′ of buffer along the property line adjacent to the Olde Hampton subdivision. That is on the property’s western property line. They must also provide landscaping to screen the electrical substation and buildings from Georgia 20 and McDonough Street.
Other zoning conditions, as drafted by city staff, require the applicant to complete the following:
- establish and maintain a hydroponic farm on the property, and donate grown produce from the site to non-profit organizations,
- no certificate of occupancy (CO) will be issued until at least 100 residential units within the Henderson Farms project have an issued CO,
- set aside land along the Towaliga River for a city park with public restrooms, parking and trails,
- contribute $75,000 to Hampton so the city can prepare architectural style guides for non-residential buildings in the city’s village mixed-use developments,
- each building exceeding 100,000 square feet in size shall incorporate a green roof for at least 25% of its roof space,
- submit a project noise impact study to the city no later than the concept plan submittal, and
- use sustainable strategies to minimize water consumption and recycle water on the property.
The developer must also complete pedestrain improvements, such as sidewalks and path lighting, along Georgia 20 and McDonough Street.
Data Centers in Henry County and Metro Atlanta
The Hampton project is the first approved data center in Henry County. Two other requests are presently awaiting a zoning decision in unincorporated Henry County. Those properties are located on Rocky Creek Road and Simpson Mill Road. A public hearing for the board of commissioners to consider those projects is not yet scheduled.
Though data centers are not yet located in Henry County, they are building rapidly in the metro Atlanta area. Atlanta is the fastest-growing data center market in the country. That’s according to commercial real estate research by CBRE. At the end of 2024, the Atlanta market had 1000 megawatts of data center inventory. Close to 2,200 megawatts were under construction.
This does not include upcoming projects such as an $11 billion investment by Amazon in Butts and Douglas Counties. New requests for data center campuses are being proposed regularly, about 1-2 per month, in the greater Atlanta area.
Featured image shows a map showing the location of the planned data center in Hampton. Clayton Carte / The Henry Reporter map created with Datawrapper.
