Another very large campus has entered Georgia’s approval pipeline. 3 G Investments, LLC has filed a development of regional impact application with the Georgia Department of Community Affairs for the Nixon Technology Center in Richmond County, outside Augusta. The proposal totals 3.34 million square feet of data center space across 388 acres at 1538 and 1550 Four H Club Road and 3806 Mike Padgett Highway, on largely vacant land next to Augusta Regional Airport, about 150 miles east of Atlanta. The project could come online in 2028 or 2029.
The property owner is the Nixon Trusts, represented by Augusta law firm Trotter Jones. Last year a related entity won rezoning of 100 acres at the site from agricultural to heavy industrial use, granted by the Augusta planning commission in November, at that time for a manufacturing warehouse.
What the filing does not contain is as important as what it does. No data center developer or end user has been identified, and no project value has been shared. Google, QTS and Cloverleaf already operate around Augusta, so the area has power, fiber and precedent, but an application from a landowner is an option on demand, not demand itself.
The proposal joins more than a dozen campus applications filed across Georgia over the past two years, totalling tens of millions of square feet. The state’s review will sort, slowly, which of these are backed by tenants and capital and which are land positions dressed as campuses. This one starts in the second category until a developer attaches its name.