Haralson County IGA May Reveal Data Center Project in Tallapoosa

Hello everyone, 

We have an update to share regarding records received so far through our Georgia Open Records Act requests to the City of Tallapoosa and Haralson County. 

Before getting into the details, it may help to explain what a GORA request is. The Georgia Open Records Act allows citizens to request records from public agencies, including local governments. In this situation, GORA requests are one of the tools being used to better understand the annexation, rezoning, Technology Park Overlay District, and related actions involving the City of Tallapoosa, Haralson County, and the Haralson County Development Authority. 

So far, we have received a number of documents from the City of Tallapoosa. Haralson County is still processing our request. We plan to share the documents we have received from the City in the coming days so residents can review them for themselves. 

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For this first update, there are four documents we believe are especially important: 

1. An Intergovernmental Agreement between the Haralson County Board of Commissioners and the Haralson County Development Authority, referred to in the document as the “Authority.” The version we currently have is from October 2025. Although it appears to be signed, we do not yet know whether any amendments or later versions were approved before or during later County action. We have requested records from Haralson County that may help clarify that. 

2. Ordinance 1318, dated October 13, 2025, which creates the Technology Park Overlay District, also called the TPOD Overlay Classification. 

3. Ordinance 1319, dated October 13, 2025, which appears to involve annexation and rezoning of approximately 600 acres of County property into the City of Tallapoosa and application of the TPOD Overlay. 

4. Ordinance 1322, dated May 11, 2026, which appears to involve annexation and rezoning of approximately 1,000 additional acres of County property into the City of Tallapoosa and application of the TPOD Overlay. 

This post will focus mainly on the Intergovernmental Agreement. 

An intergovernmental agreement, often called an IGA, is an agreement between two or more government entities. In this case, the agreement we received is between Haralson County and the Haralson County Development Authority. 

The agreement contains several stipulations that appear especially important. In simple terms, the County agreed to sell certain property (part of what is commonly referred to as the “landfill property”) to the Development Authority, and the Development Authority agreed to certain conditions regarding the future sale and use of that property. 

One of the most significant sections (pg. 2 of the IGA) states that the Authority shall sell the property to the end user for no less than $6,500,000, and that the property is to be used “solely as a data center and attendant purposes,” provided the end user agrees to certain requirements. Those requirements include: 

• Creating a minimum of 100 jobs 
• Making a capital investment of at least $4.8 billion 
• Constructing site improvements and the data center on the property at a minimum cost of $500 million over the first ten years after closing 

The agreement also states (in 6. b of the IGA) that it was executed based upon approval at a public meeting of the respective parties. We plan to address the County meeting and related transparency questions in a future post after additional records are reviewed. 

So how does this connect to the May 11, 2026 Tallapoosa meeting? 

Based on the records received so far, the May 11 meeting involved annexation and rezoning of additional County-owned property into the City of Tallapoosa. Ordinance 1322 states that the Development Authority of Haralson County, acting pursuant to an Intergovernmental Agreement with Haralson County, applied for annexation of certain contiguous property into the corporate limits of the City of Tallapoosa. 

In simpler terms, the Development Authority appears to have requested that additional County property be annexed into the City and rezoned in a way that would allow M-1 industrial use along with the TPOD Overlay. This is part of how the commonly referenced 1,600-acre figure appears to be reached: approximately 600 acres addressed earlier, plus approximately 1,000 additional acres addressed at the May 11 meeting. Ordinance 1322 is the ordinance council members voted for at the May 11 meeting. It is worth mentioning that all this information was received from the GORA request made to the City of Tallapoosa, including the Intergovernmental Agreement outlined in this post, as well as all of the ordinances.  

One reason this matters is because of how the project has been publicly described. 

In a public post made after the May 11 meeting, the City of Tallapoosa stated that the Haralson County Development Authority was authorized to market the land for industrial development, including a manufacturing plant, distribution warehouse, or data center. 

That statement may be broader than the language in the Intergovernmental Agreement we currently have, which states that the property is to be used solely as a data center and attendant purposes. Because we do not yet know whether the County-approved agreement was amended, supplemented, or replaced, we are continuing to seek records that may clarify this issue. 

At this point, we are not asking residents to rely on rumors or speculation. We are asking residents to look carefully at the documents, compare the records with public statements, and pay attention to the process being used. 

In the interest of keeping this first update manageable, future posts will address the Haralson County Board of Commissioners’ vote on the Intergovernmental Agreement, the public meeting process, the May 11 Tallapoosa meeting, and additional records received through GORA. 

We encourage residents to read the documents for themselves and reach their own conclusions. Our goal is to share what we have found, identify questions that remain unanswered, and keep the community informed using records and facts rather than speculation.

DISCLAIMER: Handwritten signatures and personal contact information within GORA documents have been redacted from publicly posted copies by the Keep Haralson Rural Coalition.