Shelby County Zoning: The Columbiana Data Center Dispute

Beyond the county's petition-based zoning-beat system, Shelby County is now the site of one of Alabama's most closely watched data-center land-use disputes: a $371.5 million conversion project in Columbiana, a secret non-disclosure agreement that outlasted a mayor's re-election defeat, and the state's first municipal zoning ordinance written specifically to govern data centers.

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

A real, financed project -- not a rumor

Digi Power X (NASDAQ: DGXX) is converting an existing industrial building at 130 Industrial Parkway in Columbiana, a small city in Shelby County, into a data center. Documents obtained by the Shelby County Reporter put the total investment at $371.5 million across building, machinery, and personal property, with construction set to begin in May 2026, completion by March 2027, and service starting in April 2027. Despite that capital scale, the direct employment commitment is modest and typical of data-center projects generally: the company projected starting with just two jobs and a $200,000 annual payroll, growing to 45 permanent jobs and a $4.5 million payroll by year three, with a stated goal of at least half those jobs going to Shelby County residents.

The facility's real anchor customer is Cerebras Systems, an AI-compute company that signed a 10-year lease for 40 megawatts of capacity at the Columbiana site -- a contract Data Center Dynamics and Digi Power X's own SEC Form 8-K filing value at $1.1 billion over the initial term, with the potential to grow to $2.5 billion if extended. That scale of committed power demand is exactly the kind of load that has driven Alabama Power and other utilities nationally to reassess infrastructure planning, and it's worth understanding as context for any land near the site that might see new transmission, substation, or utility-easement activity in the coming years.

A secret NDA, and the ordinance it produced

The project became a genuine local controversy after Inside Climate News obtained and published the text of a non-disclosure agreement that then-Mayor David Mitchell had signed directly with the developer, without bringing it to the City Council or the public first. The agreement barred Mitchell from disclosing any information the developer deemed confidential "whether in oral, written, graphic, electronic, or any other form" -- a sweeping restriction that meant the city's own elected mayor could not fully brief the council or residents on what the city had agreed to. Mitchell lost his re-election bid in August 2025 to Lisa Davis, Columbiana's first female mayor, but the NDA he signed continued to constrain what the new administration could disclose about the project even after he left office -- a genuinely unusual and well-documented example of how a single unilateral executive agreement can outlast the official who signed it.

In direct response to the controversy and to community questions raised at a town hall Mayor Davis held in January 2026, the Columbiana City Council passed a new zoning ordinance on February 17, 2026 adding specific provisions to govern future data centers: requirements addressing water and energy usage, noise limits, and landscape buffer zones between a data-center site and neighboring property, alongside review for potential environmental harm. WBRC reported this as the first ordinance of its kind adopted by an Alabama municipality specifically to govern data centers -- meaning Columbiana, a city of a few thousand people, produced the state's first purpose-built local data-center zoning framework, a genuinely notable land-use precedent for a small Shelby County city.

A ripple effect in Calera, and what this means for land in Shelby County

The Columbiana story has already had a documented ripple effect elsewhere in Shelby County. In June 2026, Calera's zoning administrator, Kevin Shirey, had to publicly address an AI-generated Facebook post spreading misinformation that a data center was planned in Calera -- there was no such proposal, Shirey confirmed, and city officials said there had been no data-center discussions in Calera at all, but the questions kept coming for weeks, driven by anxiety spreading from the Columbiana project elsewhere in the county. That pattern -- one real project generating rumor and public concern in neighboring municipalities with no actual proposal -- is worth knowing if you're evaluating land near any Shelby County municipality and hear talk of a data center: verify with the specific city's zoning office directly rather than assuming a rumor reflects an active proposal.

For land near an industrial-zoned parcel anywhere in Shelby County, the practical takeaways from the Columbiana episode are threefold: first, expect any future data-center proposal in the county's cities to now be evaluated against Columbiana's water-usage, energy-usage, noise, and buffer-zone template, which other Shelby County municipalities may adopt or adapt; second, ask directly whether any non-disclosure agreement exists between a city and a project developer before assuming public records will tell the whole story, since Columbiana's example shows that isn't guaranteed; and third, remember this ordinance and dispute involve Shelby County's incorporated cities (Columbiana, and by extension any city choosing to follow its template), not the county's own unincorporated zoning-beat system described on this county's hub page -- confirm which authority actually governs your specific parcel before assuming either framework applies.

Zoning in Shelby County: The Columbiana Data Center Dispute

A real, financed project -- not a rumor

A secret NDA, and the ordinance it produced

A ripple effect in Calera, and what this means for land in Shelby County

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