How Data Center Developers Staked Their Claim In Rural Georgia
Jacqueline Lassetter wanted to see America’s biggest data center. So one day in July last year, at the age of 78, she jumped into a car with her daughter, Daphne, and headed west across the muddy Chattahoochee River, leaving their wooded Georgia home for the Nevada desert. A week later, she was standing in front of the Citadel Campus, owned by data center company Switch, which lies along a stretch of highway outside of Reno, Nevada more than 2,000 miles from her home.
Lassetter was finally able to imagine what might soon be coming to her doorstep in Coweta County, Georgia: a gigantic, windowless computing complex emitting a strange hum.