Project Peach data center, Palmetto, Georgia

Project Peach, a data center campus of up to eight buildings and 2.1 million square feet at 300 Johnston Circle near Palmetto in Coweta County, Georgia, was filed in October 2024 by Strategic Real Estate Partners through North Coweta Investors LLC. The Coweta County Board of Commissioners approved its rezoning 3 to 2 in April 2025, with Bob Blackburn, Jeffrey Fisher and John Reidelbach for and Bill McKenzie and Al Smith against.

The developers promised 500 construction jobs, 50 permanent ones and $100 million in taxes over ten years from a campus drawing about 700 megawatts of power and phased to 2036.

The Three Rivers Regional Commission's review, completed on February 4, 2025, describes about 320 acres in unincorporated Coweta County beside SR 14/US 29 and Weldon Road, rezoned from rural conservation to light industrial, and estimates 2,080 new trips a day on a stretch the county already lists as congested.

Chattahoochee Riverkeeper told the commission that the 105,000 gallons a day the county water authority can supply comes from the Chattahoochee, while some of the 52,000 gallons of daily wastewater could be returned to the Flint River basin, an interbasin transfer.

Palmetto's mayor and council led the opposition, and residents in yellow shirts filled the seats at the rezoning hearing. Mayor Theresa Thomas-Smith asked commissioners, on behalf of all Palmetto, to "please consider the long time cost to our quality of life, our environment and our residents." Ten residents spoke against the project and six developer representatives for it.

Commissioner Fisher pointed to the county budget: "We had to cut over $10 million." Commissioner Reidelbach added two of the rezoning's 21 conditions: a power purchase agreement within six months, or the land would revert to rural conservation, and noise of no more than 45 decibels at the property line.

That six-month deadline ran out on October 15, 2025 with no contract. That month the board voted 4 to 1, with Al Smith against, to give the developers 12 more months, until October 15, 2026.

Brad Hall, representing CyrusOne, which by then the Times-Herald described as the project's developer, said talks with Georgia Power had slowed because "the end user of the data center is undetermined." If commissioners had not granted the extension, county staff would have started rezoning the land back to rural conservation, and that is what would happen again if the October 2026 deadline is missed.

Resident Tina Mann asked what deadlines were for: "When you do not follow through with them, they are meaningless." Palmetto council member Jessica Wilbanks urged commissioners to refuse the extension so the project would fall under the county's newer data center rules.

The mayor warned about construction traffic on the city's 100-year-old infrastructure, and Reidelbach called the extension "a learning curve for us."