Project dossier · Social Circle (Walton County), Georgia

Social Circle data center complex (Fairplay Drive / Roy Malcom Road tracts) Approved

A data center complex assembled from three tracts totaling more than 450 acres on the southeast side of Fairplay Drive and Roy Malcom Road, from Social Circle Parkway to Hawkins Academy Road. The Social Circle Planning Commission voted unanimously at a called April 2026 meeting to recommend annexation, rezoning, special-use permitting and a future land use map change for the final 123-acre tract at 1402 Roy Malcom Road (concept plan: two buildings of about 248,600 sq ft each); the city council then approved all four requests 3-0 at a meeting reported May 1, 2026. Engineering firm Thomas & Hutton represents the property owner; project representatives say an unnamed 'end user' is already lined up and construction could begin in fall 2026.

Key facts

Size
450 ac
Location
Social Circle (Walton County), Georgia
Application filed
2026-02-09
Stage today
Approved

Source
read 2026-08-14

What to do next

Next step: Approved — pivot from stopping it to a binding CBA: enforceable caps on noise, water and cost, plus a community benefit.

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What has happened so far (3 events)

  • 2025-09-16vote
    Council approved a special-use permit for a data center on a 181-acre tract along Fairplay Drive at Social Circle Parkway; councilmembers deadlocked 2-2 and Mayor David Keener broke the tie in favor. At the same meeting the council imposed a moratorium on new data center requests. · source
  • 2026-01-27vote
    The data center moratorium ended when the council approved comprehensive new data center regulations, including noise and lighting limits, emergency drills, time limits on special-use permits, and special-use permitting even in heavy industrial zoning. · source
  • 2026-02-09filing
    Annexation, rezoning, special-use and future land use map change requests were filed for the 123-acre tract at 1402 Roy Malcom Road, the first such filing considered under the city's new data center regulations. · source

Find the paper trail

Find the paper trail (0 filed · 11 places to look)

State environmental permits

Backup generators, water withdrawal and stormwater are permitted by the state, usually earlier and in more detail than anything filed locally.

County & town filings

The rezoning application, site plan, traffic and noise studies, staff report and every revision.

Utility & grid records

The electricity request is filed with the grid operator and the utility long before the town hears about it — and states the real load.

  • No organised market covers this statenoteThere is no public queue to read. The record is the utility's integrated resource plan and its filings at the PUC — plus FERC eLibrary for anything federally docketed.
  • Georgia Public Service Commission — docket searchSpecial contracts, large-load tariffs and rate cases are docketed here. Testimony and exhibits are public, and are usually more candid than the press release.
  • FERC eLibraryFederal filings: transmission agreements, interconnection service agreements, and co-location disputes.
  • Search the serving utility for a will-serve lettersearchThe will-serve or load-service letter is the utility's own written commitment. Ask the utility and the PUC for it by name — it is frequently the first document to exist.

Federal databases

Works anywhere, and covers the operator's record at its other sites.

  • EPA ECHO facility searchEvery federally-reported air, water and waste permit at a facility, plus its inspection and violation history. Search by address or draw a radius around the site. This project's locality centres on 33.660, -83.720 — search that point with a 5-mile radius.
  • EPA EnvirofactsThe same underlying records, queryable by county — useful for 'what else is permitted near this site' rather than one facility.
  • EPA Facility Registry ServiceResolves the shell LLC on a permit to the facility it belongs to. Worth a look when the filing name means nothing locally.

These are places to look, not evidence that anything has been filed. Links were checked on 2026-08-21; search links are queries, not records. What to ask for.

Recent news

Automated news aggregation, not human-verified — follow each link to the original outlet. Part of the story tracker, 1 headline archived.

Around here

Other tracked projects in Georgia

Cite this page: GridWatch AI, “Social Circle data center complex (Fairplay Drive / Roy Malcom Road tracts)”, aigridwatch.com/projects/social-circle-data-center-complex-ga, retrieved 2026-10-11.

As of August 2026 (2m ago) · changes weekly — re-check before citing

A working set of identified proposals a community can track, not a census — most of the country's activity is not in here yet. Pennsylvania is the exception: its rows are synced from PA DEP's own data-center permit tracker, so the state's coverage is close to complete and carries the permit trail with it. **Each row carries its own provenance.** Rows showing a verification date link to reporting or the governing body's own record and were read on that date; rows marked *unverified* have no source on record — a lead to check, not a fact to cite. **Stage is derived, not asserted.** *Hearing scheduled*, *Awaiting decision*, *Approved* and *Withdrawn* are computed from each row's milestone dates on every rebuild, so a hearing date that has passed stops reading 'scheduled'. Hearings get moved and projects re-file under new names — treat a scheduled date as the earliest to act by, and confirm with the clerk before relying on it. Leads are mined into data/project_candidates.json and promoted here only after a human reads a primary source.

Part of the data center project tracker — open data, CC BY 4.0 (JSON · CSV).

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