Fort Payne, DeKalb County, AL: 2026 Data Center Zoning

DeKalb County itself has no zoning department for unincorporated land, but Fort Payne runs its own municipal code -- and in 2026, that code got a real, dated update aimed specifically at data centers and battery storage facilities. If you're evaluating industrial or warehouse-zoned land inside Fort Payne, this is current, actionable policy, not background history.

This page covers what's specific to DeKalb County. For the general explanation, see the national guide.

A six-month pause, then a real ordinance: the 2026 timeline

On June 16, 2026, the Fort Payne City Council voted unanimously to impose a six-month moratorium on new data center and battery energy storage system (BESS) development within city limits, giving staff and the Planning Commission time to draft permanent rules before any specific proposal could reach City Hall. City officials were explicit that the move was preemptive -- they said they had not received any actual inquiries about building a data center in Fort Payne at the time -- and the Planning Commission subsequently held a public hearing to gather resident feedback on how such facilities should be regulated if one is ever proposed.

That drafting process concluded on September 1, 2026, when the Fort Payne City Council voted unanimously to adopt a permanent ordinance classifying data centers and battery energy storage systems as conditional uses, allowed only within areas zoned for manufacturing and warehouse operations -- specifically the city's M2 heavy-industrial district. The ordinance doesn't approve or clear the way for any particular project; it establishes the review process a future application would have to go through, requiring conditional-use approval from the city's Board of Zoning Adjustment, review by the City Council, and a public hearing for each specific proposal before any decision is made. Fort Payne joined Cullman and several other Alabama cities that adopted similar data-center moratoriums or zoning updates in the same mid-2026 window, part of a broader statewide wave of local pushback -- the Association of County Commissions of Alabama also passed a resolution in 2026 opposing any move to grant a single industry special zoning carve-outs at the state level.

What this means for land inside vs. outside Fort Payne

This ordinance is a Fort Payne city action, not a DeKalb County one -- consistent with the county hub's finding that unincorporated DeKalb County has no zoning department at all and cannot independently regulate land use the way a municipality can. That means the new data-center review process applies only to land inside Fort Payne's city limits; a large industrial or warehouse-scale parcel in unincorporated DeKalb County sits outside this ordinance entirely, for better or worse -- there is no equivalent county-level process to fall back on, and no county-level restriction either, absent a specific state legislative act granting the county zoning power.

For a buyer specifically evaluating M2-zoned or other heavy-industrial land inside Fort Payne with a data center, battery storage, or similar large-load industrial use in mind, the practical steps are to confirm the parcel's current zoning designation directly with Fort Payne's Planning Department, ask whether the M2 conditional-use process would apply to your specific proposed use, and budget real time and cost for the Board of Zoning Adjustment review and public hearing the ordinance requires -- this is not a by-right use even where it's technically allowed. For land outside city limits with a similar large-industrial use in mind, ask the DeKalb County Commission directly whether any comparable use restriction has been discussed or adopted since this page's review date, since this is a fast-moving statewide policy area as of 2026.

Fort Payne's New Data Center Zoning Rules, DeKalb County, Alabama

A six-month pause, then a real ordinance: the 2026 timeline

What this means for land inside vs. outside Fort Payne

Ready to talk to someone who knows land?