The city of South Fulton ended its data center moratorium in September after adopting new guardrails intended to protect neighborhoods and public infrastructure. 

Now, for Mayor Carmalitha Gumbs, the issue is educating the public that data centers are not only the new reality for cities but an economic necessity.

“There are a lot of misconceptions about data centers: They kill us, give us cancer, all of the bad things, because people just don’t know,” Gumbs said this week during Bisnow’s Atlanta State of the Market. 

“The time that we took [with a moratorium], we were able to see what we can do to be a little bit more business-friendly," Gumbs said. "Be thoughtful about how we welcome these opportunities into our community."

A recent visit to Loudoun County, Virginia — the data center capital of the world — showed her the risk that South Fulton and the rest of Metro Atlanta face if they turn away data centers. Loudoun County reaped $1.1B in tax revenue from data centers in fiscal year 2026, revenue that has helped the county lower its property tax rate over the past decade.

"We rode through Loudoun County, and it’s immaculate. Those data centers are helping that city reach their needs," Gumbs said at the event at 1375 Peachtree.

The U.S. is experiencing a rising tide of grassroots resistance to new data centers, mainly over environmental concerns and neighborhood disruptions. Last year, 25 data center projects were scrapped due to community pushback, nearly triple from 2024, according to energy publication Heatmap. At the start of this year, 40% of the 770 planned data center projects in the U.S. faced backlash.

But panelists at the event said cities and counties have little choice but to embrace data centers, which Big Tech companies are expected to spend more than $700B on this year.

“The AI economy, the technology economy, is driving all our lives,” Develop Fulton Chairman Kwanza Hall said. “So we really need to embrace it and be ready for this massive tsunami of economic impact and try to ride the wave, change our lives, change our strategies, be very nimble and make sure our communities are prepared and informed about the benefits.”

Fulton County, which includes the cities of South Fulton and Alpharetta, has 22 data center projects in the development pipeline that will produce more than 1 gigawatt of power, according to the U.S. Data Center Map.

South Fulton adopted a moratorium in December 2025, which lasted through Sept. 9. In August, the city approved an ordinance to impose new permitting requirements and performance standards on data centers.  

Alpharetta Mayor Jim Gilvin, whose city houses 18 data centers, said the backlash has much more to do with the intensity and scale of newly proposed data centers, especially those designed to handle artificial intelligence computing. While panelists said local governments have opportunities to save money by incorporating AI into public services, Gilvin said there are risks as well. 

“A lot of things can go wrong if you have someone in your organization that doesn’t respect the laws and the guardrails and things like that. We have to be very careful,” Gilvin said. “If we make a mistake with AI, it impacts our taxpayers and our community. We're looking at opportunities that will actually save our taxpayers, not cost our taxpayers.”