Downtown data center seeks permitting as city approves ban

Just as the City of Atlanta enacts a clampdown on data center development in specific intown locations, a sizable new data facility is seeking permission to move forward downtown a stone’s throw from a transit station, pro sports arenas, and historic landmarks.

An unspecified development team filed plans this week to build a 300,000-square-foot data center project at 10 Forsyth St. NW, a 1.08-acre site tucked between Ted Turner Drive and Marietta Street, next to active railway.

For context, the first new-construction building to climb from the Gulch and top out at nearby Centennial Yards—the 19-story Mitchell apartments—is also 300,000 square feet.  

The site, which is used as surface parking today, is roughly a block from Five Points MARTA station and Underground Atlanta, with Centennial Yards’ properties just to the west, in the opposite direction.  

The Special Administrative Permit filing made with the city this week indicates an ordinance grants a special use for the Forsyth Street property to be remade as a data center. “The project design, including the vertical improvements and the streetscape improvements, will be addressed in a separate submittal,” reads the SAP application.

Property records indicate the owner is an LLC called Spring Street Atlanta, which bought the site from an affiliate of Centennial Yards developer CIM Group three years ago for $22.6 million. The total acreage listed in that deal is just shy of 1.2 aces, per the Fulton County Board of Assessors.

The SAP applicant with law firm Troutman Pepper did not respond to an inquiry for more information about the proposal this week.

A hearing date for the SAP application is scheduled for Oct. 24, according to the Department of City Planning.

Should the project move forward, it wouldn’t be the only data center in the immediate area. Equinix Data Center operates a facility next door to the site on the fifth floor of the 56 Marietta St. building, occupying about 7,600 square feet of space, according to Data Center Journal.

The filing comes as the Atlanta City Council voted this week to ban data centers within a half-mile of MARTA stations and near the Beltline’s 22-mile loop, as the city experiences surging demand to build such facilities from tech giants such as Facebook and Microsoft.

The legislation to ban data centers was introduced by councilmembers Jason Dozier and Matt Westmoreland—and cosponsored by every other city councilmember—with the logic being to keep server farms with few jobs away from hotbeds of growth where housing and commercial opportunities could be created, as available land in Atlanta becomes more scarce. 

Property records indicate the Forsyth Street parcel in question falls within a Special Public Interest zoning district. That classification’s goal is to “preserve, protect, and enhance downtown’s role as the civic and economic center of the Atlanta region” and to foster a “24-hour urban environment where people can live, work, meet, and play,” per city code.

Should the project move forward as planned, it wouldn’t be the only data center to recently enter the intown pipeline, though most data center development in the metro has been located in the suburbs.  

West of Midtown, QTS is expanding its 100-acre campus, considered the largest data center in the Southeast, by more than 36 acres for a multi-phase project that includes offices in the Knight Park/Howell Station neighborhood. A residential component is also planned to eventually take shape along West Marietta Street with that project.  

Earlier this year, the Development Authority of Fulton County approved a controversial $10.1 million tax break for Tesla CEO and twitter/X owner Elon Musk, who plans to house computer servers for X artificial intelligence work at the QTS facility. The deal will reportedly keep 24 jobs in Atlanta but won’t create new ones.

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