Last February, during a packed city council meeting in Union City, residents urged officials to reject more data centers and warehouses in their community. They asked for walkable neighborhoods, shopping, restaurants, and amenities similar to Alpharetta in north Fulton County.
But reaching that goal isn’t easy for cities on the south side of Fulton County.
Economic development is complex in part due to the arrival of warehouses and data centers, which, while beneficial for cities’ municipal tax revenue, often drive down the appeal of nearby land for residential and retail developers, Chattahoochee Hills Mayor Tom Reed said.
Big corporations moving to the metro area would need to see where their workers could live on the Southside,” Reed said. “What kind of quality and amenities would they have?”
Reed, who helped Chattahoochee Hills become incorporated in 2007, is also an executive committee member of the Aerotropolis Alliance, a public-private partnership focused on regional economic growth near Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. Stakeholders include officials from Union City, College Park, East Point, Hapeville, the city of South Fulton and other nearby cities.
“Tom is a very critical voice on our executive committee,” said Shannon James, President and CEO of Aerotropolis Alliance. “Tom has that regional mind. “There’s no question the work that we are doing aligns with his thinking.”
As an entrepreneur, Reed’s startup companies in different industries have been recognized seven times on Inc. Magazine’s 500/5000 list of the top 500 fastest-growing companies among 5000.
Together, Reed and James have been advocating for a more aligned and intentional approach to growth on the south side.
Reed said the city of South Fulton is in a particularly “untenable” situation.
Before the city was incorporated in 2017, the surrounding cities annexed unincorporated swaths of its land, leaving the municipality with fragmented borders that face the industrial development of neighboring cities such as Union City.
“So in [South Fulton], you end up with… Fulton Industrial Boulevard stretching all the way over to Old National Highway, inside and outside of cities,” Reed said.
“There are fire trucks that sometimes have to drive through two cities to get to a fire (in South Fulton),” he added.
Longtime homeowners who want to sell their homes have seen no signs of interested buyers, SaportaReport has learned.
South Fulton Councilwoman Helen Willis said that a local property owner is unable to sell 90 parcels of land to residential developers as intended because of neighboring industrial structures.
“What we have to do now [on council] … is probably change the zoning on those parcels to industrial so the land owner can monetize the property. They can’t build homes there, and that was their intent,” Willis said.
Pathways to development
Property tax revenue from data centers is significant. In 2024, the QTS Data Center in Fayette County generated more than $1 million, up from $31,000 in 2016 when the county still owned the 615-acre site, according to Niki Vanderslice, CEO of the Fayette County Development Authority, speaking during the South Metro Development Conference in February.
In south Fulton County, Reed says there are areas that could thrive with mixed-use development. The kind that integrates housing, retail, and green space.
He envisions a part of East Point being rebranded as “the Midtown of the Southside,” he said.
He also notes that Chattahoochee Hills has prioritized smart growth by limiting development to just 30% of its land, leaving the remaining 70% for open space. That approach has preserved walkability and green space, particularly in communities like Serenbe.
It pays off economically and in less wear and tear on infrastructure, Reed said.
“In [the city of] Milton, there you have three and five-acre lots, and you have to run a sewer line down a mile-long stretch of road to serve 20 homes.”
“Here, within a mile, I’ve got 300 homes paying for the same length of sewer pipe. It’s 10 times more economical to do it here than there,” Reed said.
“We have cheap land on the Southside,” he continued. “If we [get it] together and advocate for zoning, the return on investment would be higher than anywhere else.”
A 2020 land-use study conducted through the Community Development Assistance Program of the Atlanta Regional Commission found that many properties have zoning that is outdated and no longer applies to present-day project possibilities, James said. And infrastructure is old.
“We have projects that have been stalled because of infrastructure in our area,” he said.
In 2026, Aerotropolis wants to utilize the ARC program again to launch a new planning tool that would help the Southside cities to align in their development decisions, “and ensure one city’s progress doesn’t come at another’s expense,” James added.
“When there’s a project being proposed there [would be] kind of a guiding policy that you communicate with the neighboring jurisdiction to address issues around territorial boundaries,” he said. “It’s the respecting of those boundaries and communicating with each other.”
Challenges don’t stop there, James and Reed said.
Lending for development in the southern part of Fulton County is not automatically assured, they said.
James, a former bank lender, says that creditors and underwriters have “long-standing perceptions” that there is higher crime and lower income levels on the Southside of Fulton County.
“We have to work harder, we have to be more creative … to get the type of development [projects] that are in north Fulton,” James said. “Looking across the landscape, [projects] are happening just not at the same rate and pace as in other areas.”
Reed said he understands how a city would be motivated to approve of a data center or warehouse or other industrial businesses for tax revenue but he also believes, “The idea isn’t that everybody has to do it in the most ultimate way, but you should aim higher than the lowest thing that exists.”
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