Georgia's artificial intelligence infrastructure boom won't be coming to Savannah anytime soon.
Savannah City Council approved Thursday a 155-day moratorium on large scale data centers, a move intended to give the city time to craft local policy regulating the use. The moratorium comes on the heels of OpenAI’s late July announcement of a large data center planned for Effingham County—the first of its kind in Coastal Georgia.
Savannah Mayor Van Johnson said the rapid pace of data center proposals in Georgia and across the country sparked the need for the city to begin addressing the issue. Council's approval of the moratorium was unanimous.
“Herein lies an opportunity for us to put the pause button on and really come up with thoughtful, responsible
policy,” Johnson said.
Currently, the city is without an established framework for dealing with these large-scale data centers sprouting throughout the state.
There is no defined use or classification for data centers in the City of Savannah’s zoning ordinance. Before the moratorium, a data center application would have required an “individualized determination” on how it could be classified under the city’s zoning code, said Savannah’s Press Secretary Monique Williams in an email.
City leaders say the moratorium will enable the city to craft zoning classifications and development standards for data centers, while also studying impacts on infrastructure such as water resources.
“That gap is precisely why both the moratorium and the underlying policy work are needed,” said Williams.
Savannah does not yet have a large-scale data center, but Johnson said Tuesday the city has received some interest for data centers. He described the inquiries as entities asking if the city would be open to proposals.
Johnson also said he doesn’t think the city will be immune to the boom. OpenAI’s project, known as Project Camelia, in Savannah’s back yard presented the city with an “opportunity” to act now, he said.
The city expects to have a proposal before council by the second meeting in January.
“We should also set the rules for Savannah before the market sets the rules for us,” Johnson said.
The boom in data centers has been driven by the need to power new artificial intelligence technologies and cloud computing. And Georgia has become a magnet with Atlanta becoming the second largest market for data centers in the U.S., according to reporting by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
That proliferation has included pushback from residents and officials about energy and water usage concerns. An OpenAI open house on Project Camelia saw over 100 residents show up in protest.
Savannah’s moratorium defines large-scale data centers as those with an electrical capacity of 10 megawatts or more. For scale, OpenAI’s Effingham proposal is projected to need 3.2 gigawatts. One gigawatt is equal to 1000 megawatts.
The moratorium also prohibits warehouses and industrial properties at 200,000 square feet or more from conversion to data centers. The Savannah-area market has a 9.9% vacancy rate in industrial space, according to a Q2 report from Jones Lang LaSalle.
Savannah has now joined other Chatham County municipalities in pressing pause on data centers. Garden City and Bloomingdale both approved their own moratoriums this summer.
The Chatham County Board of Commissioners, one day after Savannah’s approval, had a first reading for a moratorium on its meeting agenda. District 7 Commissioner Dean Kicklighter proposed a moratorium earlier in the week.
“Before the County considers or approves such development, I believe it is prudent for us to take the necessary time to fully evaluate the issues involved,” Kicklighter said in a Facebook post announcing his proposal.
Evan Lasseter is the City of Savannah and Chatham County government reporter for the Savannah Morning News. You can reach him at ELasseter@savannahnow.com.
This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Savannah hits pause on data centers after OpenAI's Effingham proposal
