Data centers are permitted only in the I-1 Light Industrial or I-2 Heavy Industrial districts and require a Special Use Permit approved by the Board of Commissioners.

The Board of Commissioners must review and take final action on each data-center Special Use Permit.

Applicants must hold a community meeting after filing the petition and at least 30 days before the public hearing, with mailed notice to property owners within 1,000 feet, newspaper notice, posted signs, required meeting materials, and attendance by a representative with design decision-making authority. Failure to comply prevents the application from being scheduled or requires its removal from the Board's agenda.

Minor data centers under 20,000 square feet still require Special Use approval in an I-1 or I-2 district and must comply with the applicable underlying-district standards; data centers over 20,000 square feet must comply with the broader standards in Sections 7.6.2.D through 7.6.2.N.

A data-center site must contain at least 20 acres, have at least 250 feet of road frontage, provide 100-foot front, side, and rear setbacks, maintain at least 100 feet between buildings, and limit lot coverage to 80 percent.

Building height is limited to 60 feet, with up to 10 additional feet allowed for parapets and rooftop equipment.

Minor data centers must provide a 50-foot landscape buffer along all property boundaries, reducible to 30 feet where adjoining property is zoned or used for industrial purposes.

Sites adjoining residentially zoned or residentially used property must provide a 500-foot undisturbed, generally forested buffer; the buffer may be reduced to 100 feet when adjoining nonresidential zoning or road frontage.

All data centers must use public water and public sanitary sewer, and private wells are prohibited.

Before a land-disturbance permit is issued, applicants must provide written will-serve letters and approved plans from applicable electric, water, and sewer providers, demonstrate adequate electric capacity, and pay for required utility upgrades.

Primary on-site diesel generation is prohibited except during bona fide utility-grid failures or emergency conditions; proposed on-site generation also requires County review and approval.

Data-center buildings must use at least two approved exterior materials on street-visible facades and at least two required articulation, mass-reduction, height-variation, projection, recess, or material-change features.

Perimeter fencing is required. Frontage fencing must be decorative metal with a landscape strip, visible property-line fencing must generally be at least eight feet high, and visible fencing may not use barbed wire, razor wire, concertina wire, or similar anti-climb materials.

Sound levels may not exceed 60 dBA from 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. or 55 dBA from 10:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m., measured at any property line.

Backup generators must meet EPA New Source Performance Standards and Tier 4 emissions standards. Generator testing is limited to 10 hours per month and must occur Monday through Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., excluding weekends and federal holidays.

Generators must be enclosed or screened with sound-attenuation measures, and operation above permitted noise levels is allowed only during bona fide emergency utility outages.

Before receiving a certificate of occupancy, applicants must submit a post-construction noise-compliance report prepared by a qualified acoustical engineer and install continuous 24-hour sound monitoring. Annual noise, generator-testing, maintenance, water-use, and energy-use reports are also required.

Zoning or development review must include noise, environmental-impact, water-consumption, energy-consumption, sewer-capacity, lighting, transmission-line, tree-preservation and reforestation, stormwater, waste-management, and emergency-action studies or plans.

Required mitigation measures must be incorporated into approved development plans, and applicants must reimburse the County for qualified third-party professional review of required studies, analyses, assessments, or technical reports when the County determines review is necessary.

Exterior lighting must use full-cutoff, fully shielded, zero-uplight fixtures; fixtures must be at least four times their mounting height from property lines, may not exceed 20 feet in height, and illumination at a residential property line may not exceed 0.05 footcandles.

Mechanical equipment, generators, cooling equipment, and substations must be screened from public rights-of-way and adjacent residential properties by an opaque wall, fence, or vegetated berm at least eight feet high and located at least 500 feet from residential properties.

Open-loop cooling systems are prohibited. Cooling must use air-cooled, closed-loop, or equivalent water-conserving technology, and proposed cooling and ventilation equipment must be identified in the zoning petition.

Operators must coordinate annual emergency-response training for Fire, EMA, and 911 personnel and reimburse the County for reasonably attributable specialized training or equipment costs.

Applicants must submit a County-reviewed security plan addressing controlled access, 24/7 security staffing or monitoring, video surveillance, security lighting, trespass and civil-disturbance procedures, emergency contacts, and law-enforcement coordination.

The emergency-action plan must address active-threat and active-shooter incidents, bomb threats, evacuation, shelter-in-place procedures, and coordination with emergency services. Cryptocurrency facilities require enhanced surveillance and defined staffing or monitoring.

Owners or operators intending to permanently cease operations must provide the Planning and Zoning Department at least six months' written notice and submit a shutdown and decommissioning schedule.

Before decommissioning begins, the owner or operator must obtain County approval of a decommissioning plan and all required permits. The plan must address equipment and infrastructure removal, hazardous materials, environmental remediation, utility disconnection, and site restoration.

The County may require financial assurance, including a performance bond, irrevocable letter of credit, or escrow, for decommissioning and site restoration; the assurance remains in effect until completion is verified.

A facility may be deemed abandoned after 12 consecutive months without operations, excluding temporary maintenance, upgrades, or repairs. Decommissioning must generally begin within six months after cessation or abandonment and be completed within 24 months, unless an extension is granted for good cause.

After decommissioning, the Special Use Permit terminates and becomes void, so restarting data-center use requires a new Special Use Permit.

Converting an existing data center to another high-intensity computing or digital-processing use, including cryptocurrency mining, artificial-intelligence computing, or an unapproved large-scale cloud or colocation facility, requires a new Special Use Permit unless the Planning and Zoning Director determines the use is substantially similar to the approved use.

Development on a site containing a special-flood-hazard or future-conditions flood-hazard area requires the applicable permit and an approved floodplain-management or flood-damage-prevention plan before work begins.

New construction and substantial improvements are prohibited within the future-conditions floodplain unless specified floodplain, engineering-study, and floodway requirements are satisfied.

Floodplain development may not raise the base-flood or future-conditions flood elevation by 0.01 foot or more, reduce flood-storage capacity, materially change flow characteristics, or create hazardous or erosion-producing velocities.

Allowed floodplain development must provide compensating flood storage and demonstrate no-rise and flow-condition compliance; a CLOMR may be required before construction and a LOMR within six months after completion.

Encroachments in a regulatory floodway, including fill, new construction, substantial improvements, and other development, are prohibited except for specified bridges, culverts, roadways, and utilities supported by engineering analyses showing no increase in flood elevations or floodway widths.

In applicable flood zones, building systems and utility equipment must be located or designed at least three feet above the base-flood elevation or one foot above the future-conditions flood elevation, whichever is higher.

Land development near streams must preserve an undisturbed natural vegetative buffer extending 50 feet from the top of each stream bank and generally maintain an additional 25-foot setback where impervious cover is prohibited.

A stormwater-management permit and plan are required for development adding at least 5,000 square feet of impervious surface or disturbing at least one acre; commercial or industrial hotspot uses are covered regardless of size.

Covered projects must meet applicable runoff-reduction, water-quality, channel-protection, 25-year overbank-flood, 100-year extreme-flood, and downstream peak-flow requirements.

Before receiving a land-disturbance or building permit for covered development, applicants must submit an approved stormwater-management plan, certify compliance, address any infeasibility determination, and agree to record an inspection-and-maintenance agreement.

Stormwater facilities require recorded drainage and access easements, generally 20 feet wide, and certain detention facilities, wetlands, retention ponds, or similar devices may require fencing and warning signs.

At final inspection, applicants must provide certified as-built drawings, certify that stormwater systems and landscaping conform to approved plans, submit required performance testing, and deliver a recorded inspection-and-maintenance agreement.

Owners of stormwater systems must inspect, clean, maintain, and repair them; the obligations bind successors, and owners may be jointly and severally liable when responsibilities are not allocated by a recorded assignment.

Industrial or construction activities subject to an NPDES stormwater permit must comply with that permit, and Hall County may require proof of compliance before allowing discharge to the county storm sewer system.

Polluting non-stormwater discharges and illegal connections to the county storm sewer system are prohibited. Known or suspected pollutant releases must be contained and reported within 24 hours, confirmed in writing within three business days, and commercial or industrial records must be retained for at least three years.

Commercial or industrial zoning applications require a Trip Generation Memo, and a Traffic Impact Study is required before County consideration if the County determines the project will generate 500 or more gross daily trips; the applicant must pay for the study.

Zoning changes and uses requiring County Commission approval require public hearings and advance newspaper, posted-property, and mailed notices.

If a zoning, conditional-use, or appeal application is denied, the same property generally may not be considered for another zoning application for at least six months, and an application of the same type may not be filed for at least twelve months.

Zoning, Special Use, conditional-use, variance, and appeal applications require fees, with fees for rezoning, conditional-use, and variance applications varying by acreage and zoning district.

Subdivision construction cannot begin before preliminary-plat approval, and final plat approval requires a maintenance bond, escrow, or irrevocable letter of credit covering infrastructure for at least 24 months.

Violations of applicable floodplain, illicit-discharge, stream-buffer, or stormwater requirements may result in stop-work orders, withholding of certificates of occupancy, permit suspension or revocation, civil penalties of up to $1,000 per day, criminal misdemeanor penalties, and abatement costs or liens.

Data centers are permitted in the I-1 Light Industrial and I-2 Heavy Industrial districts through a Special Use Permit approved by the Board of Commissioners.

Minor data centers under 20,000 square feet may use the minor-data-center standards and are not required to provide otherwise required studies or analyses unless the Planning and Zoning Director determines that studies are needed because of the facility’s scale, operations, or potential impacts.

Minor data centers generally require a 50-foot landscape buffer, but the buffer may be reduced to 30 feet when adjacent property is zoned or used for industrial purposes.

For larger data centers, the required buffer may be reduced to 100 feet when the site abuts nonresidential zoning or road frontage, instead of the 500-foot undisturbed buffer required next to residentially zoned or residentially used property.

Data centers may install on-site renewable-energy systems, energy storage, microgrids, limited-use diesel generators, and certain emerging technologies such as small modular reactors, subject to applicable approvals, regulations, and safety requirements.

Diesel generators may be used during bona fide utility-grid failures or other emergencies, but may not serve as the primary power source except during those conditions.

Air-cooled systems, closed-loop cooling systems, and equivalent water-conserving technologies are permitted; open-loop cooling systems are prohibited.

Applicants may coordinate public water and sanitary-sewer capacity and upgrades through written will-serve letters before land-disturbance approval.

Data-center buildings may have up to 80% lot coverage and may be up to 60 feet high, with up to 10 additional feet for parapets and rooftop equipment, subject to the total height limit.

Data centers have a defined parking requirement of 1.5 spaces per 5,000 square feet.

During development review, the Planning and Zoning Director may grant administrative variances of up to a 10% setback reduction, a 1% lot-coverage increase, or a 10% parking reduction, if the adjustment has a clear nonfinancial justification, is the minimum necessary, and will not harm public welfare or adjoining properties.

Existing data-center structures may be repurposed for uses permitted in the underlying zoning district. A conversion to another high-intensity computing or digital-processing use requires a new Special Use Permit unless the Planning and Zoning Director finds the proposed use substantially similar to the originally approved use.

Generator testing is allowed for up to 10 hours per month on weekdays between 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m., and operation exceeding applicable noise limits is allowed during bona fide emergency utility outages.

Post-construction stormwater requirements generally apply only to new development or redevelopment creating at least 5,000 square feet of impervious surface or disturbing at least one acre, subject to specified exceptions.

If retaining the first inch of rainfall through runoff-reduction methods is determined infeasible, an applicant may instead use water-quality treatment that removes at least 80% of the calculated average annual post-development total suspended-solids load.

For qualifying redevelopment, existing development may generally be used to establish pre-development hydrology and runoff conditions unless doing so would negatively affect downstream property.

Qualifying nonresidential construction and substantial improvements in the future-conditions floodplain may use certified floodproofing instead of elevating the building, provided applicable floodplain, engineering, floodway, and watertightness requirements are met.

Lawful repairs and maintenance, existing development and ongoing land-disturbance activities, projects already under construction or approved, and certain recently approved master development plans are grandfathered from specified stream-buffer rules.

Land disturbance consisting solely of cutting a utility trench and replacing related pavement is exempt from post-construction stormwater-management standards.

A traffic-impact study is required for a commercial or industrial development only when the Director of Public Works determines from the required trip-generation memo that the project is expected to generate at least 500 gross daily trips.

Certain subdivisions may be exempt from preliminary-plat requirements, including qualifying subdivisions fronting an official county road that need no new street, community water system, or community sewer system; final-plat approval and recording are still required.

The Planning Commission may modify UDC standards for a planned development when the plan provides adequate public spaces and improvements for circulation, recreation, light, air, and services, but the modification may not authorize a prohibited use or reduce the required minimum lot area per dwelling unit.