Google Named Sole End-User and Operator of 8 Million Sq Ft Data Center in Columbia County, Georgia

Google has been formally designated as the “sole end-user and operator” of the Columbia County Data Center, a massive eight million square foot (743,224 sqm) data center development in the U.S. state of Georgia. The announcement was made on Thursday, July 23, by the Columbia County Economic Development Authority, marking a significant milestone for one of the largest single-site data center projects in the country.

Located northwest of the existing White Oak Business Park, the development will span 1,900 acres and include 23 individual data center buildings, according to site plans published on the project’s website. The scale of the campus underscores the surging demand for cloud and AI infrastructure, as major tech companies race to secure large-scale computing capacity to support next-generation workloads.

“This is one of the most significant investments in our county’s history,” said Doug Duncan, chairman of the Columbia County Board of Commissioners. “Growth like this strengthens the commercial tax base that funds our schools, roads and public safety, and over time it reduces how heavily those services rely on residential property owners.” Duncan also appeared on stage in Washington, D.C., alongside President Donald Trump to promote the deal during a conference focused on expanding the Ratepayer Protection Pledge—a non-binding commitment intended to shield utility customers from increased electricity bills driven by data center expansion.

The project has been a subject of local controversy since April 2025, when commercial real estate firm Trammel Crow Company, a subsidiary of CBRE, filed a Development of Regional Impact application for the site. Concerns have centered on the strain that such a large energy-intensive facility could place on the regional power grid and residential ratepayers. Google’s involvement as the end user, along with the Ratepayer Protection Pledge framework, aims to address some of these concerns by tying the project to commitments that mitigate cost impacts on local communities.

Columbia County sits northwest of Augusta, Georgia, near the state’s eastern border with South Carolina. The region has emerged as a growing hub for data center development due to its available land, access to fiber networks, and favorable business climate. For Google, this campus will add substantial capacity to its global cloud infrastructure, supporting everything from search and advertising to generative AI and enterprise services. As hyperscale data center campuses continue to grow in both size and power demand, projects like this highlight the increasing need for coordinated planning between technology companies, local governments, and utility providers to ensure sustainable growth.