111 Acres on the Etowah: Inside Bartow County, Georgia's Data Center Showdown

The Brown Farm Road parcel sits inside the Etowah Valley Historic District — a designation that carries real weight locally — but it is also flanked by an existing lineup of industrial users: Southeastern Freight Lines, Aquafil USA, Dynaflux, Heatco, Advanced Metal & Welding, Super-Sod, Westside Storage, and a Georgia Power substation, roughly a mile from Georgia Power's Plant Bowen. That geography is central to the developer's argument. Oakley's core pitch, as reported by the Daily Tribune and FOX 5 Atlanta, is that "this is already an industrial road," with power, fiber, and highway access in place — meaning, in the developer's framing, that the site is a natural extension of an existing corridor rather than a change of character.

Oakley principal Reid Hanner has described the proposal as a "micro-scale" facility. His pitch at the July 15 meeting, as reported by the Daily Tribune, included: a voluntary square-footage cap (450,000 sq ft), closed-loop water cooling with a very small annual refill, a projected ~$5 million/year contribution to the local tax base, minimal expected demand on the school system given the small headcount, an archaeological survey already underway, and formal notification sent to the Muscogee (Creek) and Cherokee Nations given the site's location inside the historic district. Setbacks of at least 200 feet from residential areas, screening and berming, and dark-sky, full-cutoff lighting have all been offered as zoning conditions. Again, the ~$5 million/year and ~10,000-gallon figures are the developer's own — not independently verified.

Concerns raised at the July 15 meeting, as reported by FOX 5 Atlanta and the Daily Tribune, centered on noise, water usage, environmental effects on the Etowah River, and dropping property values. A Bartow County homeowner near Brown Farm Road, speaking at the July 15 meeting, said developers "paint a nice pretty picture" but leave open the question of who ultimately operates the facility. That framing — that the rezoning is being decided before anyone knows the tenant — was echoed repeatedly by neighbors who signed up to speak. Not a single member of the public spoke in favor.

Bartow's fight is not happening in isolation. As of late 2025, Georgia Public Broadcasting reported that a "wave" of data center ordinances had swept through Georgia counties as local governments tried to catch up with developer interest. Nationally, Data Center Watch tracked at least 75 data center projects worth roughly $130 billion that were disrupted by local opposition in the first quarter of 2026 alone. Bartow County is also grappling with a separate, previously reported data center campus proposal elsewhere in the county — worth noting only as context that this is not the first such request local officials have seen, without conflating its acreage or figures with the Brown Farm Road proposal. For landowners weighing what these trends mean for their own parcels, our Georgia land hub and guides like 8 Ways to Sell Land Faster in Georgia and Selling Inherited Land in Georgia break down local timing and pricing dynamics.

The Bartow County Planning Commission's July 27 recommendation is advisory. Final authority in Bartow rests with Sole Commissioner Steve Taylor, whose vote on the rezoning is expected at his next public meeting on August 5, 2026. No operator or tenant has been publicly named — the rezoning, not a specific data center design, is what is actually being voted on. Any figures tied to a particular end user, or to precise tax or water impact, will remain unconfirmed until (and unless) the entitled land is sold and a builder discloses its plans.