Residents 1, Data Center 0

At yesterday’s Zoning Review Board (ZRB) meeting, weeks of careful coordination across neighborhoods and NPUs culminated in an inspiring demonstration of community stewardship. Dozens of residents clad mostly in yellow swarmed to City Hall to signal their opposition to ordinance Z-24-66. Their message? Land by the West End MARTA Station is simply no place to build a data center.

Pouya Dianat, President of Adair Park Neighbors, and Shayna Barley, Vice-President of the Westview Community Organization, reviewed line-by-line the case against using valuable transit-accessible land to warehouse server racks. Not least among their arguments was the fact that just two months ago the City Council voted unanimously to adopt Ordinance 24-O-1222 for the explicit purpose of prohibiting such uses for parcels located with 1/2 mile of a MARTA Station. Their words and those of several other community members, combined with the powerful show of sartorial solidarity, left nothing unsaid.

A representative of the property owner himself couldn’t help but comment about the size of the group during his own remarks. Another representative lamented that while the company had previously been able to rent the property out as a production location (for shows such as “Stranger Things and films such as “Jackpot!”, starring Awkwafina and John Cena), today the property no longer generates the profits for them that it once did.

When comments concluded, the Zoning Review Board voted and was unanimous in its recommendation against the proposed ordinance. Their recommendation will be reviewed by the City Council’s Zoning Committee, which will then make its own recommendation to the City Council.