Data centers in Richmond County, Georgia: 2 projects mapped

Imagery: Esri, Maxar

QTS is building a data center campus at 2883 Gordon Highway in west Augusta, between the Haynes Station and Captain's Corner subdivisions, where neighbors learned of it only when groundwork began. The plan is six two-story buildings, about 2.2 million square feet, and a $2 billion investment with 160 to 220 permanent jobs, QTS told the Augusta Commission in February 2026. On September 15, 2026, commissioners narrowly adopted, 6-5, citywide rules for any new data center; they do not apply to the QTS campus, which was zoned years earlier.

T5 Data Centers first announced a 200-megawatt campus on the site in January 2022, on what was then an isolated stretch of Gordon Highway, and later dropped out; the homes on either side were built after the first approval. QTS took over an expanded plan, says it will use closed-loop cooling, and groundwork has begun, with buildings promised "into the next few years." Neighbors call the process secretive. "My request is that this commission require clear, enforceable measures for transparency and accountability before we move forward with this project," resident Suzettra Walker told commissioners in June.

The commission paused new data center applications on June 2, 2026, after more than two hours of public comment, and the pause lasted almost three months until the new rules passed. The rules keep data centers out of residential and farm areas, require a public hearing and commission approval in most other zones, set a buffer of at least 500 feet from homes, cap noise at 65 decibels by day and 60 at night, and require closed-loop cooling with no private wells.

Every project above is drawn from public records, filings and local reporting. Each row links to what it is based on. Statuses change, so check the source date before you rely on one. Found something wrong? Write to [email protected] and it gets fixed.