Small towns see economic boost from data center development rush

It’s a digital gold rush as data center development sweeps America’s small towns.

As requested artificial intelligence, With the rise of cloud computing and digital storage, developers are racing to secure land, energy, and water.

This growth has become increasingly concentrated: roughly 1% of US counties, roughly 33 counties, now account for 72% of all data center activity as of July 2025, according to a recent analysis by Goldman Sachs. But the map changes almost daily.

One Georgia community is witnessing this transformation in real time.

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Newton County, about an hour east of Atlanta, is one of four counties that host MIT’s Stanton Springs campus.

FOX Business got an exclusive look inside the facility, which opened in 2018 and has continued to expand, with a second campus now under construction. The 1,000-acre site houses eight massive buildings, each roughly the length of four football fields, and filled with rows of high-speed servers running 24/7. The cable network is long enough to reach the moon and back. Which is where data for facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and other Meta platforms process and push at record speeds.

Technology inside the Meta Stanton Springs data center in Social Circle, Georgia. (Fox Business Network)

It’s just one of 26 data centers currently under construction or already in production in the U.S., with more growth on the horizon.

“I’ve been in the industry for more than 20 years, and I’ve never seen this level of focus on data centers,” KC Timmons, director of global operations for SiteOps at Meta, told FOX Business. “It’s innovative. There are a lot of good things we can do.”

Meta’s arrival has been largely welcomed, and its investments have become a major economic pillar of the region, creating hundreds of jobs, supporting local contractors, and creating long-term employment opportunities. Tax revenues For schools and public services. The company now employs nearly 400 people in HVAC, electrical, operations and technical roles, most of whom are from the surrounding community.

But Meta’s presence is now consistent with the tremendous growth the county has seen just this year. Not everyone is happy about that.

“It’s all fantasy,” Newton County Commissioner Lee Ann Long told Fox Business. “It’s not what they say. These big developers come with lucrative promises like zoning, water and electricity. It’s the biggest thing I’ve ever seen.”

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Long, who is also a real estate broker in the area, wonders what will happen years from now if the industry’s footprint changes and mega-buildings are no longer needed.

“What happens to the communities we lost?” He asked long ago.

Newton County has become one of the most aggressive data center construction areas in Georgia. Since January alone, local officials say 11 additional data centers are in various stages of planning or construction. Amazon has already done so Construction began on a $25 million acreage purchase — about $50,000 per acre — backed by Georgia Power. In nearby Social Circle, where Meta is located and which straddles Newton and Walton counties, officials have zoned seven other data center projects without a long-term land use plan.

Staff inside Meta’s Stanton Springs data center in Social Circle, Georgia. (Fox Business Network)

“Some might say we’re building the plane while we’re flying it,” Sierra Hall, executive director of the Newton County Industrial Development Authority, told FOX Business.

Serra said Meta’s success has sparked a new wave of interest in the region, making strategy and coordination more important than ever. Since the beginning of the year, she says her phone has been ringing constantly with inquiries from companies looking to build nearby.

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Part of the reason growth has accelerated so quickly is the county’s access to power, its proximity to I-20 and the extensive fiber infrastructure built by Meta. Through the Open Compute project, which Meta co-founded, an initiative to create scalable and efficient open source hardware Data centers Help reduce costs. The OCP Initiative actively encourages and facilitates more companies to build and adopt highly efficient data center infrastructure.

“We’re trying to bring everyone to the table and slow things down,” Hall said. “It’s about working together on the road. It takes good planning.”

Stanton Springs Meta Data Center in Social Circle, Georgia. (Fox Business Network)

Brings data center streaming Benefits go beyond jobs. Since 2022, when the first taxable Meta buildings came online, the company has contributed $12 million in cumulative tax revenue — a number that is expected to rise as construction continues. Before Meta’s arrival, the same land had been out of taxation for nearly two decades under government ownership.

Meta has also launched initiatives to support small businesses, such as workshops to teach local owners how to grow through Instagram Reels. Meanwhile, Amazon has partnered with Newton County Schools and Goodr to open a free grocery store that will provide students with fresh produce and prepared foods.

However, residents say the promises do not always match their life experience. Several major manufacturers — including Meta, Rivian and Takeda — have partnered to recycle water back into the community, but concerns remain as the development footprint grows.

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“This has all become very popular since January 1,” Long said. “I didn’t even know what a data center was a year and a half ago. We were just bombed.”

Long stressed that Meta itself is not the problem, as its campus is located in a designated commercial area and has not disrupted residential life. Her concerns are the wave of new arrivals, the risk of vacant mega-structures in the future, and the impact speculative development could have on home values.

For long-time residents, the pace of construction is becoming harder to ignore.

Lisa Miller, 64, lives near land that once housed a lumber mill and is now an active Amazon construction site.

Amazon data center construction site in Oxford, Georgia. (Fox Business Network)

“We’re not a big place,” Miller told FOX Business. “People here love cattle and horses.” The area has been shifting between rural, suburban and industrial uses for decades, but never so quickly.

Blasting and heavy construction also raised safety concerns. Miller described one neighbour’s experience: “I heard the explosion – and then the entire ceiling of her living room came down.”

Amazon told FOX Business that its $11 billion investment will enable AI innovation and create thousands of jobs, from network engineers to construction workers, and will also give back to the community.

“As we build these facilities over the next few years, we remain committed to being good neighbors,” a department spokesperson said.

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Energy demand is another growing concern. Data centers will use approximately 8% of total U.S. energy by 2030, and U.S. utilities will need to invest about $50 billion in new generation capacity to support the facilities. According to Goldman Sachs.

Inside the Stanton Springs Meta Data Center in Social Circle, Georgia. (Fox Business Network)

Despite the concerns, local leaders and residents agree that the solution is not to reject the industry, but to slow down the pace, coordinate and plan for long-term consequences.

Meta, as the first anchor in the region, has committed to providing more Renewable energy of what it consumes and become beneficiaries of water by 2030, with the aim of setting a model for responsible development.

“If I could say something to the entire nation, it would be: Think about this carefully,” Miller said. “Plan for it. Don’t stick it in every cow pasture for sale.”