Thor Equities Targets $1B North Georgia Data Center

Thor Equities is targeting a nearly 560-acre wooded site off Georgia State Route 293 in Bartow County, about 60 miles north of downtown Atlanta, for a $1 billion data center it is calling the Kingston Technology Hub, according to Bisnow. The New York developer submitted a Development of Regional Impact application to the Georgia Department of Community Affairs on September 4, proposing a 350,000-square-foot facility targeted for delivery in 2030.

Why it matters

Thor Equities built its name in retail and industrial real estate, and it made its first South Florida move earlier this month, paying $62 million for a Boca Raton office tower. Now it is chasing the country’s hottest asset class in a different region entirely. That is the pattern developers should watch: firms with no data-center track record are converting into the space because the land, power and incentive math works better than their traditional lines of business right now. For a developer weighing the same pivot, the site Thor picked, a rural county an hour outside a major metro rather than an urban infill parcel, signals where the real constraint sits: not entitlements, but finding a utility that can commit enough megawatts.

The numbers

The Kingston Technology Hub calls for 350,000 square feet on the Bartow County site, at an estimated cost of $1 billion, with delivery projected for 2030. Thor’s filing requests 150 megawatts of power per day from the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia and 50,000 gallons of water daily. The company projects 50 full-time jobs on site and $2 million in annual local tax revenue, with each direct data center job expected to generate 4.5 additional jobs in the surrounding economy, according to the filing cited by Bisnow.

In a statement, Thor called the project “a transformational opportunity for the local economy, bringing high-paying jobs, supporting our schools, and offering infrastructure upgrades that will benefit all residents of Kingston and Bartow County.”

What’s next

The Development of Regional Impact filing now moves through Georgia state review, the process that will determine whether the power commitment, water allocation and local approvals needed for a 2030 delivery actually line up. Site selection criteria like these, land, grid capacity and a cooperative jurisdiction, are what is pulling non-traditional developers like Thor into the data-center site selection fight, and Bartow County’s answer on power will be the first test of whether the project stays on schedule.