Google will be the sole end user and operator of an 8 million-square-foot data center campus planned for Columbia County, Georgia, county officials announced Thursday, in what local leaders are calling one of the largest economic development investments in the Augusta region’s history.
The Columbia County Board of Commissioners and the Economic Development Authority of Columbia County (EDA) said Google LLC, a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., will occupy the Columbia County Data Center, a planned 23-building campus spread across roughly 1,900 acres at the White Oak Park property in Appling, northwest of the existing White Oak Business Park.
“Securing an investment of this scale is the result of years of work,” EDA Chairman Rick Evans said in the announcement. Board Chairman Doug Duncan said the project “strengthens the commercial tax base that funds our schools, roads and public safety.”
The announcement caps a longer buildout. County records show the site was rezoned from residential-agricultural to a special data center district in May 2025, and the underlying land changed hands twice last year: Trammell Crow Company acquired the property for roughly $78 million, then sold it to Kinetic Infrastructure Partners for about $500 million in a transaction ratified in December 2025. Google’s role as end user was the final piece confirmed this week.
Why Georgia, why now
Georgia has become one of the country’s most active data center markets as cloud providers race to add capacity for AI workloads. Metro Atlanta and its exurbs have absorbed a wave of hyperscale campuses in recent years, and the Augusta area β anchored by Fort Gordon, the Army’s cyber and signal hub β offers land, power access and a technical workforce pipeline that developers have increasingly targeted. The Columbia County project extends that boom west along the South Carolina border.
Local officials structured the deal around utility and tax terms rather than public incentive grants. Google has committed to covering 100% of the energy infrastructure costs tied to the project, according to the county announcement, and revenue from the development is intended to help Columbia County reduce its homestead property tax burden. Georgia Power and parent Southern Company are also parties to a companion agreement establishing development standards for the site, including noise limits, lighting restrictions, larger setbacks from residential areas and landscaped buffers.
The announcement was timed to a White House event Thursday where Duncan and County Manager Scott Johnson joined President Trump for an expanded “Ratepayer Protection Pledge,” in which utilities and companies commit to shielding residential ratepayers from data-center-driven infrastructure costs. Georgia Power has pledged rate stability through 2028. Google was among the earliest large technology companies to sign the pledge nationally, alongside Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Oracle and others.
What it means
Verified: Google is now publicly confirmed as the sole end user and operator of the 8 million-square-foot, 1,900-acre Columbia County campus, following a rezoning and two land sales over the past 14 months.
Attributed: County officials frame the project as a tax-base diversification tool aimed squarely at lowering homestead property taxes, and say Google’s energy-cost commitment and the accompanying development covenants are meant to insulate residents from both rate increases and physical impacts.
RealtyWire analysis: The deal illustrates how ratepayer-protection commitments and restrictive site covenants have become standard dealmaking currency for hyperscale data centers, as communities push back on the grid strain and land-use disruption tied to the broader industrial real estate boom driven by AI infrastructure demand.
What to watch
No firm construction completion date has been disclosed; officials describe the buildout as multi-year. Key markers ahead include site permitting and covenant compliance under the new development standards, Georgia Power’s capacity planning as the campus ramps toward full power draw, and whether the promised homestead tax relief materializes on the timeline county officials have outlined. Resident reaction, which has included concerns raised at public meetings, is also likely to shape how the project proceeds. For more on industrial and data-center real estate trends, RealtyWire will continue tracking the Columbia County buildout as permits and construction milestones are filed.
