Meeting Confirms Plans for Second Major Brookwood Data Center
A second data center, entirely separate from the Applied Digital project the Tuscaloosa Thread revealed last week, is being planned in Brookwood, and it cleared an early hurdle Tuesday night when the city's Planning and Zoning Commission recommended annexing and rezoning 374 acres for it.
The recommendation on the "Project Brookwood LLC" petition now heads to the Brookwood City Council, which holds final authority and is scheduled to vote Sept. 15.
The Tuesday meeting confirms that Brookwood is now weighing at least two large data-center developments at once. The project the commission advanced Tuesday is sought by a newly formed company, Project Brookwood LLC, acting on behalf of Youngwoo & Associates, a New York real estate developer whose work includes data center development, according to the rezoning petition.
County GIS records show that through the LLC, Youngwoo already owns 200 acres of land on Brookwood Parkway, just across the street from Brookwood Middle School.
A different entity, ALAWEST-AL LLC, owns 680 acres of adjoining property, some of which is needed for the new Youngwoo project. The rezoning petition lists 374 acres of the land as "currently under contract." It would be sold, annexed into Brookwood city limits, and rezoned from the default single-family residential to light industrial to accommodate the development.
The 2 million square foot Applied Digital data center is a different project, proposed by a different developer on different land, which City Engineer Collins Espy confirmed directly on Tuesday. The 374-acre parcel for the Youngwoo development is separate property just to the west of the 1,300 acres amassed by Applied Digital.
Because the "Project Brookwood" land has never been zoned and would default to single-family residential upon annexation, the petitioner is asking that it instead come in as M1 light industrial, which is the same classification the city has applied to other tracts annexed along Brookwood Parkway.
At a packed-out meeting of the planning and zoning committee, Birmingham attorney Tim Davis spoke on behalf of Project Brookwood and said only that they were acquiring property in addition to what they already own, "for a variety of uses, none of which have been set in stone yet."
One committee member even suggested that, for all he knew, this request could be related to a new automotive supplier.
"I understand the word data center is getting thrown around, and I understand that is a possibility," he said. "But it could also be another manufacturer for Mercedes; we don't know that."
His confusion is a bit hard to understand — the application from Project Brookwood LLC for rezoning is short, but it says explicitly that they are seeking to build a "Data Center Campus" on the land.
Much of the roughly hourlong meeting became a referendum on transparency, as residents pressed officials to say what would be built before voting to rezone the land, with officials declining to go beyond the zoning question.
After listening to 45 minutes of questions, concerns, and opposition to the data center, the three committee members present and Mayor Joe Barger, who sits on the board, unanimously voted to recommend the rezoning.
"We have planned for over 30 years to work this in as an industrial parkway," Barger told one resident. "From George Newell Road to the interstate, there are no homes. It's not residential. We have planned for years for that to be our industrial parkway."
There were also concerns about the proximity of both of these projects to Brookwood Middle School — the Youngwoo land is directly across from the school, even if the long-term vision for that area has been for industrial development.
"If I had been involved in the negotiations for the development of the middle school, I would never have been in favor of that location," Barger said.
The mayor has suggested that the school, built in 2002, is "outdated and overcrowded" and may have to be moved to accommodate the growth of industry in Brookwood.
After the Tuesday meeting, Barger took no questions from the media or constituents, shut his truck door on a TV reporter, and sped away, out of Brookwood and into Tuscaloosa.
The full City Council will take up the rezoning for a final vote on September 15 at 4:30 p.m.
For more coverage of this project and other industrial development in West Alabama, stay connected to the Tuscaloosa Thread.
Top Stories from the Tuscaloosa Thread 8/3 - 8/10)
Gallery Credit: (Stephen Dethrage | Tuscaloosa Thread)