All I will say is this: the “concern” and “protection” of the watershed coalition is suspect in my opinion. I personally contacted them to intercede in a 2700 acre solar development on the SAME river on PRIME farmland and heard absolutely nothing back from this organization. The area the data center is planned for is the right side of the river and is poor farmland known as a sand ridge. The footprint for the data center is MUCH smaller, even with the last additional parcel, less than half of the solar system. Having attended multiple meetings over the last three years, I know how both projects have been addressed and handled. This article does not reflect what I know, experienced, and remember. There is more information about this story than you have provided for the reader to be able to make an informed assessment.
Hi Becky, we were conducting a review of the Data Center itself, not the prior development history of this parcel and other proximate parcels. This additional context is of course highly useful, and we’d love to hear more about it, and welcome further discussion on it. Ultimately, we do not feel this compromises the reader’s ability to make an informed decision about the credibility of claims around this data center itself, the ‘100s of jobs’ and ‘significant tax revenue’, because those claims simply don’t bear out in reality. We have studied literally hundreds of data center sites, and we have never seen the tax revenues compensate the communities for the cost. The tax accountants working in the State of Georgia also agree with us on this point. https://vesperosint.substack.com/p/the-digital-land-grab?r=7zme4x
I believe you give too much credit to the watershed coalition’s concerns. Our commissioners and zoning board members as well as other community leaders have toured a similar data center and brought back their findings to share with the community. Have you researched the Newton County Ga Data Center? The Newton County data center is currently the biggest in state and employees 500 full time 24/7 365. Please call (770) 786-7510 and ask for the chamber president. She will verify how many permanent employees they have at this facility.
Thanks, Becky. A couple of points that need to be made very clear here. The Newton County site is a Meta Data Center, performing enterprise compute. That means it's Meta facility and Meta staff. Enterprise data centers, used for serving their apps to the public, and training their AI systems do employ significant staff. Meta is also one of the best companies in terms of community engagement and community support, and invest heavily in the communities around their data centers vs. the peer group.
That is not typical of most data center players. Further, the land deal structure in the case of project Arrowhead is NOT typical of how Meta, Google, or AWS put together their data center deals. They will typically operate through shell companies. More likely, as we point out, this is a colocation play, or a lease play. While it does not rule out a hyperscale tenant like Meta, to assume that it is going to be one, overstates the case. More likely this will resemble the Prologis site, or the QTS site in Fayetteville (colocation/landlord play), where the staffing levels are typically 1 - 50 people per location. If you are anticipating a Meta facility (or similar) creating 500 jobs in the area, you are very likely to be disappointed. The chamber president should have gone and toured, in conjunction with the Meta site, a couple of colocation facilities, and taken a close hard look at the staff inside and the uniforms they are wearing, because they do not hire hundreds of staff. Currently, no one has any idea who the tenant for this facility is, but it must be noted that CBRE are brokers, not builders. Our assessment of staffing is open to changing, if a tenant is announced, but not because anyone toured a random, unrelated data center for a major enterprise hyperscaler, which employs an unusually high number of staff.
As far as the comment regarding the Industrial Authority, you should have realized that action was in direct response to the back door deals and improperly implemented ordinance put in place for this project. You tout transparency, but you yourself are intensely opaque and multi layered.
We simply report what is in the public record without editorial. We don't actually make any comment about the motive behind the IA situation, except that which was reported in the public record. We would happily caveat that if there was an official explanation provided in the public record.
We do note the pivot however to attacking our integrity in the face of being incorrect about 500 jobs in Newton County having anything to do with the likely data center under discussion here. It does make one wonder what your real agenda here is.
Great piece, but I have a question about this section: "The Development Authority had acquired the land at roughly $12,559 per acre and flipped it same-day at approximately $1,479,235 per acre, a markup of roughly 118 times. The Authority netted approximately $75 million."
As I understand it, the sale price for the 600 acres was $153.8 million, translating to approximately $250,000 per acre, according to the Fayette County Development Authority. Every outlet I've seen reports the same: QTS acquired the assemblage for $153.8 million, or approximately $250,000 per acre. Your claim of ~$1,479,235 per acre would mean 615 acres sold for about $910 million, roughly six times the actual price. The "118x markup" is derived from that per-acre figure, and I'm just not getting the math. What am I missing?
All I will say is this: the “concern” and “protection” of the watershed coalition is suspect in my opinion. I personally contacted them to intercede in a 2700 acre solar development on the SAME river on PRIME farmland and heard absolutely nothing back from this organization. The area the data center is planned for is the right side of the river and is poor farmland known as a sand ridge. The footprint for the data center is MUCH smaller, even with the last additional parcel, less than half of the solar system. Having attended multiple meetings over the last three years, I know how both projects have been addressed and handled. This article does not reflect what I know, experienced, and remember. There is more information about this story than you have provided for the reader to be able to make an informed assessment.
Hi Becky, we were conducting a review of the Data Center itself, not the prior development history of this parcel and other proximate parcels. This additional context is of course highly useful, and we’d love to hear more about it, and welcome further discussion on it. Ultimately, we do not feel this compromises the reader’s ability to make an informed decision about the credibility of claims around this data center itself, the ‘100s of jobs’ and ‘significant tax revenue’, because those claims simply don’t bear out in reality. We have studied literally hundreds of data center sites, and we have never seen the tax revenues compensate the communities for the cost. The tax accountants working in the State of Georgia also agree with us on this point. https://vesperosint.substack.com/p/the-digital-land-grab?r=7zme4x
I believe you give too much credit to the watershed coalition’s concerns. Our commissioners and zoning board members as well as other community leaders have toured a similar data center and brought back their findings to share with the community. Have you researched the Newton County Ga Data Center? The Newton County data center is currently the biggest in state and employees 500 full time 24/7 365. Please call (770) 786-7510 and ask for the chamber president. She will verify how many permanent employees they have at this facility.
Thanks, Becky. A couple of points that need to be made very clear here. The Newton County site is a Meta Data Center, performing enterprise compute. That means it's Meta facility and Meta staff. Enterprise data centers, used for serving their apps to the public, and training their AI systems do employ significant staff. Meta is also one of the best companies in terms of community engagement and community support, and invest heavily in the communities around their data centers vs. the peer group.
That is not typical of most data center players. Further, the land deal structure in the case of project Arrowhead is NOT typical of how Meta, Google, or AWS put together their data center deals. They will typically operate through shell companies. More likely, as we point out, this is a colocation play, or a lease play. While it does not rule out a hyperscale tenant like Meta, to assume that it is going to be one, overstates the case. More likely this will resemble the Prologis site, or the QTS site in Fayetteville (colocation/landlord play), where the staffing levels are typically 1 - 50 people per location. If you are anticipating a Meta facility (or similar) creating 500 jobs in the area, you are very likely to be disappointed. The chamber president should have gone and toured, in conjunction with the Meta site, a couple of colocation facilities, and taken a close hard look at the staff inside and the uniforms they are wearing, because they do not hire hundreds of staff. Currently, no one has any idea who the tenant for this facility is, but it must be noted that CBRE are brokers, not builders. Our assessment of staffing is open to changing, if a tenant is announced, but not because anyone toured a random, unrelated data center for a major enterprise hyperscaler, which employs an unusually high number of staff.
As far as the comment regarding the Industrial Authority, you should have realized that action was in direct response to the back door deals and improperly implemented ordinance put in place for this project. You tout transparency, but you yourself are intensely opaque and multi layered.
What is the real agenda here?
We simply report what is in the public record without editorial. We don't actually make any comment about the motive behind the IA situation, except that which was reported in the public record. We would happily caveat that if there was an official explanation provided in the public record.
We do note the pivot however to attacking our integrity in the face of being incorrect about 500 jobs in Newton County having anything to do with the likely data center under discussion here. It does make one wonder what your real agenda here is.
Great piece, but I have a question about this section: "The Development Authority had acquired the land at roughly $12,559 per acre and flipped it same-day at approximately $1,479,235 per acre, a markup of roughly 118 times. The Authority netted approximately $75 million."
As I understand it, the sale price for the 600 acres was $153.8 million, translating to approximately $250,000 per acre, according to the Fayette County Development Authority. Every outlet I've seen reports the same: QTS acquired the assemblage for $153.8 million, or approximately $250,000 per acre. Your claim of ~$1,479,235 per acre would mean 615 acres sold for about $910 million, roughly six times the actual price. The "118x markup" is derived from that per-acre figure, and I'm just not getting the math. What am I missing?