The decision comes about a week after the Monroe County Planning and Zoning Board voted unanimously to recommend denying the proposal. However, as the board can only make recommendations, the final decision was with the commissioners.
The board of commissioners’ decision Tuesday officially defeats the project. Had the rezoning been approved, property owners Haley Newnam, Holly Doss and Otis Ingram planned to sell the land to a tech company that would develop the land into a data center.
The property owners told The Telegraph after the meeting in an email they are disappointed by the county voting down the rezoning.
“This project is a thoughtful, community-driven proposal designed to bring meaningful long-term benefits to Monroe County,” the property owners said. “We will be evaluating our next steps.” Project generates concerns
The proposal drew widespread criticism from Monroe County residents, who said it posed environmental threats, would create noise and light pollution and could endanger Bolingbroke’s small town charm.
Nearly 900 people attended Tuesday’s board of commissioners to oppose the project, drawing such a crowd that the board of commissioners moved the meeting from the Monroe County Conference Center to the Monroe County Performing Arts Center for additional space.
Margo Kenirey, who lives near the 900 acres that were under consideration, said she worried about the environmental impact of the data center.
“We already see flooding in Colaparchee Creek and Rocky Creek,” Kenirey said. “This is the wrong place for critical infrastructure.”
The data center would have been located in a 100-year floodplain, indicating a higher risk for floods, according to a report by the Middle Georgia Regional Commission, which evaluates potential impacts of large-scale developments in the region. The report also said the land is “among the more environmentally sensitive areas” in the region, and that it lies within a state-designated priority ecological area.
Experts and media reports say data centers can be a significant burden on local water resources due to the large amounts of water needed to keep machinery inside cool.
Residents also said a large number of trees would need to be cut down in order for the data center to be constructed on the property, which is covered by swaths of forest.
The property owners told The Telegraph on Friday that they would’ve placed conditions on the rezoning to limit the number of trees cut and preserve the surrounding area.
Other residents expressed concerns that having a data center there would impact their properties.
Laurie Bloodworth, who lives next to the property with her family, said she opposed the project due to the noise and light it would generate, and the potential for a data center pushing large amounts of water into her yard.
“During heavy rains, our creek swells and comes up to 20 feet onto our property,” Bloodworth said. “[Data center] runoff would impose millions of gallons onto our property, placing our homes in direct, imminent danger.”
According to preliminary plans released by the property owners ahead of the planning and zoning meeting, additional retention ponds would have been constructed to manage runoff. However, as the property does not currently have a buyer, those plans may have changed based on a company’s designs.
Bill Larsen, an attorney with Macon-based firm Martin Snow LLP, represented the property owners. He argued the commission is obligated to rezone the land due to a 1975 Georgia Supreme Court ruling called Barrett v. Hamby that determined a county declining to rezone a residential property into a commercial one constituted “an unconstitutional taking of that property without just compensation.”
Attorney Jonathan Waters, who was representing an elderly couple who lives adjacent to the property, said this was not true, and the facts of the case were too dissimilar to be compared.
Larsen and the property owners declined to comment on whether they would file a lawsuit. Larsen said he brought the case up in order to be able to use it in the future if a suit were to be filed over the board of commissioners’ decision.
© 2025 The Macon Telegraph (Macon, Ga.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
