At their July 14 meeting, the Coffee County Commission took a large step aimed at controlling where, or even if, data centers can be built in rural Coffee County.

The resolution amendment that passed 16-0 will clear up a potential loophole that could have been used to build a data center in the county’s extensive A-1 agricultural areas.

Hunt said the purpose of the zoning resolution amendment is to first acknowledge the existence of data centers, identify these as special exceptions (a specific term in zoning related to particular land use), define what a data center is and, importantly, specify that data centers can only be located in an M-2 Special Impact Industrial District.

The M-2 zone is a very limited zone designated for adult establishments, quarries and other potentially undesirable land uses.

Hunt said that the Planning Commission will work on further developing the language of the resolution to ensure there will be no negative impacts on the county from data centers.

Chairman of the Planning Commission Steve Cunningham said when you put a land use in M-2, the county can put conditions on it.

“We have worked on the conditional uses, but we haven’t got them in order officially yet,” he said. “This had to pass before we can do that.”

Cunningham said that legal land uses cannot be outright banned and that the county has to have a place for it somewhere. He said that some language in the zoning resolution that specifies land use in A-1 could be interpreted to include data centers.

“So we decided to move it into another section all by itself and set conditions on it so we can control how it goes. We will be continuing to do that,” he said.

Cunningham said the amendment will be on the Planning Commission’s next meeting agenda.