-David Crowder, WRGA News-
Brice Wood
There continues to be a lot of discussion regarding data centers.
Rome-Floyd County Planning Director Brice Wood gave an update during a recent joint development oversight committee meeting.
There are four possible date center projects in Rome and Floyd County.
“And I say that word loosely when I say possible, he said. There’s a whole stack of plans on my desk for things that have never been built, so I don’t get excited until someone breaks ground. It’s a popular topic all over the state. It’s not just Rome and Floyd County. I think there’s something like probably 100 being proposed statewide from what I understand.”
A Microsoft data center in the area of Huffaker Road and Fouche Gap was the first to be announced.
“It’s somewhere in the design phase, Wood said. “The others are very much theoretical, and a couple of them are still waiting for Georgia Power to announce whether or not they could even support it. Most people won’t spend a ton of money on design work until they know that they have a green light to move forward.”
The others are the Battery Business Complex, which is the former Northwest Georgia Regional Hospital site, behind Coosa Middle School, and the old Ball site in Shannon.
There have been some conceptual drawings, but none of them have submitted plans to the planning office.
Wood was part of a delegation that visited Douglasville to see the date center there.
“It’s fascinating to go to a community like that, he said. “For us, this is a new idea, but I think they got their first one in 2008. So they’ve had over a decade now—coming up on two decades—to deal with it. We stood outside several of them out at the sidewalk, and all I can tell you is I didn’t hear a thing. One of the potential concerns I would have is in the event of a power outage, all of a sudden a whole lot of generators are gonna kick on. I do worry that at some point that might get loud.”
Wood was a guest on Wednesday’s First News with Doug Walker on WRGA.
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