Months after southwest Atlanta neighborhoods voted against proposed legislation that would put a data center by the West End MARTA station, the Atlanta City Council has tabled the ordinance.
During a July 13 Zoning Committee meeting, City Council members voted to hold the legislation, which would alter an existing city ordinance that bans data centers near transit hubs and the Beltline. The legislation would allow real estate investment group Digital Realty to build a $500 million data center in the area.
Ahead of the meeting, the city’s planning staff recommended approval of the legislation and the city’s zoning review board voted to deny the legislation.
The proposed legislation is sponsored by Councilmember Antonio Lewis. He drafted similar legislation for the project in 2024, but it was defeated after opposition from Adair Park residents and an intervention by Mayor Andre Dickens. Councilmember Eshe Collins was at one point a co-sponsor of the current legislation, but has since removed her name.
The current legislation caps a data center’s total electricity use at 100 megawatts. Other requirements include allotting at least 10% of the building for retail space. The proposed site plan shows the Digital Realty project would be around 350,000 square feet.
While the proposal was originally slated to head to a full council vote Aug. 3 if it made it out of the committee, the decision to hold the legislation delays the process at least until the committee meets again next month.
During the meeting, multiple council members said Lewis requested to table the legislation.
“I want everybody to know that us holding it today is not us shirking our responsibilities,” Councilmember Thomas Worthy said. “The request to hold actually came from the author, and that is something that we do out of courtesy here.”
Lewis said in an email to Capital B Atlanta that he could not comment on the legislation while it’s in the zoning process as it “could be seen as a public hearing.”
The issue has been hotly contested in the neighborhoods of Pittsburgh, Mechanicsville, Adair Park, Summerhill, and Peoplestown. More than 200 residents came out to a Neighborhood Planning Unit-V meeting in April for a community vote on the legislation, with the majority ruling against it.
Opponents of the project cited concerns related to the energy and water consumption that a data center can use, and also wished to see the land utilized for things like affordable housing. The project’s supporters said they hoped it would create jobs and bring money to historically Black neighborhoods that have lacked investment over the years.
Ahead of the NPU-V meeting, the Pittsburgh Neighborhood Association and Mechanicsville Civic Association voted in favor of the legislation on the condition that a Community Benefits Agreement — a contract between developers and community members that outlines certain investments the developer will provide to the surrounding area — be established.
Delvin Davis, the president of the Pittsburgh Neighborhood Association, told Capital B Atlanta that since the NPU-V vote, talks between the developers and neighborhood group have stalled.
Davis said negotiators could not agree on the amount of money the company would invest into the community over time. Davis said the Pittsburgh Neighborhood Association wanted $35 million to be invested in the area, whereas the developers were only willing to go as high as $10 million.
“This isn’t a development that we were enthused about from the beginning, but if it’s something that we’re going to be stuck with, then we wanted to negotiate in good faith, and they’re not willing to do the same,” Davis said.
He said he felt like the company was using a “take it or leave it” approach during the negotiations, which he said turned him off from the entire process.
“It wasn’t like it was someone who wanted to be a part of our neighborhood, who wanted to be a part of our community, and who wanted to help build and not take away. That’s not what I got from it,” Davis said.
Digital Realty did not immediately respond to Capital B Atlanta’s request for comment.
In an email to Capital B Atlanta, Hakim Hilliard, an attorney representing the developers, said that while the Pittsburgh Neighborhood Association did not agree to the terms of the current version of the proposed CBA, other neighborhood groups including the Mechanicsville Civic Association, Peoplestown Revitalization Corporation, and the Pittsburgh Collaborative have “indicated their intention to become parties to the agreement.”
He said the current deal includes “$10 million in community investments.”
Tyrone Clemons, treasurer of the Pittsburgh Neighborhood Association and a data center opponent, said that Digital Realty, a company worth billions, should be investing more than the $10 million it’s proposing for the area.
“Because if you’re making billions off of historically Black neighborhoods, then you need to be paying billions in equity for the kind of disruption and opportunity you’re taking from those neighborhoods,” Clemons said. “But they don’t want to do that because that would be fair trade, and they don’t want fair trade. They want to extract and profit as much as possible.”
