Microsoft Filed a 910,000-Square-Foot Atlanta Campus Under Georgia's New Rules

Microsoft has filed a Development of Regional Impact application with the Georgia Department of Community Affairs for a two-building data center campus in Union City, southwest of Atlanta. The project, listed as ATL50, covers 910,000 square feet across two three-story buildings on an 88-acre parcel at 5235 Stonewall Tell Road, with an expected launch in 2032. A Development of Regional Impact filing is a state-level review that flags projects large enough to affect neighboring jurisdictions. The application became public on September 17.

It is one of the first hyperscale applications to run through a review track Georgia built specifically for this kind of project. The Department of Community Affairs paused data center reviews in July 2025 because its regional impact standards had not been revised since 2014, when a campus of this size was still hypothetical. In November 2025 the department's board approved a new technological facilities category, triggering regional review at 500,000 square feet outside Atlanta Regional Commission territory and in ARC rural areas, and at 300,000 square feet in ARC urban and suburban areas. Applicants now have to estimate water and electricity consumption. The department does not approve or reject anything; local governments still hold that authority.

ATL50 is not Microsoft's only work on that road. A separate campus at 4810 Stonewall Tell Road, developed with EdgeConneX, has been reported at 324 megawatts across 2.1 million square feet, part of an Atlanta investment previously put at $1.8 billion. Microsoft assembled at least 480 acres across the metro for no less than $171 million. Two campuses of that scale within a few blocks of each other means overlapping electrical scope: medium-voltage distribution, substation and switchgear work, generator paralleling, busway, and the branch and controls work that follows behind it.

The load has to come from somewhere. Georgia Power told the state Public Service Commission it projects 8,448 megawatts of growth between the winters of 2025/2026 and 2030/2031, and asked to certify roughly 9,900 megawatts of new capacity through an all-source solicitation. The utility filed nearly 2 gigawatts of new customer contracts and said it remained in negotiations over several additional gigawatts. Each of those megawatts arrives as substation, transmission, and service-entrance work long before a rack is energized.

The labor math on campuses like these is lopsided in a way that favors the trades. Microsoft's earlier Union City project was estimated at 50 permanent jobs against 400 to 600 construction positions, supported by $75 million in local tax abatements over ten years. That ratio is the argument for reading data center announcements as construction demand rather than operations demand. Hiring arrives in phases tied to building turnover, which is why contractors staffing this work recruit journeymen and apprentices years ahead of energization and often move crews between campuses rather than demobilize them.

Georgia has stopped treating buildings this size as ordinary industrial construction. The electrical scope was always this large. The paperwork is only now catching up. What changed is that contractors bidding metro Atlanta work can see the pipeline, and its power draw, before the first permit is pulled.