Data Center Planned for 114 Acres Behind Coosa High School
A second data center project is planned for Floyd County, this time on property behind Coosa High School, and it’s likely not the last.
The Rome Floyd Development Authority, acting as a go between for the Floyd County Board of Education and a developer, approved an option on 114 acres of property at $40,000 an acre Tuesday.
“It can only be for a data center,” RFCDA President Missy Kendrick said after the vote on Tuesday. “This will be data center number two.”
In October 2023, Microsoft announced the purchase of 347 acres on Huffaker Road and pledged a $1 billion investment in the project.
A data center is the physical location where servers as well as networking and computing infrastructure are stored. Boiled down, it’s the facility that stores a company’s digital data. In many cases, these data centers share roles with other data facilities or act as a computing hub.
The buyer of that land is the revocable living trust of William Darryl Edwards and is represented by three developers Darryl Edwards, Darren Hardin and Jonathan Ward, Kendrick said.
At this point, no specific company has been named for the Coosa project, but a limited use for the property is part of the purchase agreement.
“The developer can only purchase that land for the development of a data center,” Kendrick said.
The Floyd County Board of Education approved the sale of the land through the development authority during its Nov. 26 meeting.
Weighing in on the sale, Floyd County Schools Superintendent Glenn White said it’s a win for the school system.
They’d no intention of developing that property behind Coosa High School, he said, and it gets that property back on the tax rolls. The Microsoft data center project has already begun to pay dividends, White said.
“The more money projects like this one pay on property taxes to the school, the less people like you or me have to pay,” White said.
As part of the Microsoft deal, the company was guaranteed a 12-year partial tax abatement for buildings and equipment on the property. The company pays property taxes as well as county school taxes on the increased value of the land.
Another move by the authority on Tuesday, dubbed Project Sassy, approved an option for 15 acres of property owned by the authority next to the Lowe’s Distribution Center for sale at $60,000 an acre.