Sumner County, Tennessee Zoning: The Gallatin Data-Center Boom

Meta's Gallatin campus: live, large, and already generating friction

Meta's data-center campus south of Roundtree Drive, west of Brights Lane, and north of Hartsville Pike in Gallatin is now live and serving network traffic, built on roughly 805 acres with a data-center building of about 982,500 square feet. Reporting found this pass describes it as a multi-billion-dollar project -- one widely cited figure puts total investment at roughly $4.4 billion and calls it the largest single private investment in Tennessee history, while separate industry trackers list the facility's power capacity at figures ranging from roughly 300 megawatts to an earlier-reported 450 megawatt proposal. Those specific dollar and megawatt figures should be treated as approximate rather than pinned down with certainty this pass -- see methodologyNote -- but the scale and reality of the project are not in question: construction drew an average of roughly 1,100 skilled trade workers on site at peak, the completed campus now supports more than 100 permanent operational jobs, and Meta was Gallatin's largest local taxpayer in 2025, paying the city an estimated $1.8 million.

That scale cuts both ways for anyone evaluating land nearby. On one hand, a hyperscale employer of this size is a genuine, durable driver of local tax base and secondary commercial demand. On the other, local reporting found this pass describes residents, two years into the campus's development and operation, still raising concerns about the project's effect on utilities (data centers are large, continuous electricity and water consumers), environmental impact, and nearby property values -- concerns that are a normal and expected part of due diligence for any parcel near a large industrial or hyperscale-infrastructure use, not a reason to avoid the area outright.

A second hyperscale project is rising next door

Meta's campus is not the only hyperscale project in Gallatin. A joint venture between Evoque Data Center Solutions and Archer Datacenters is developing a second campus adjacent to Meta's site, planned at roughly 100 megawatts of power capacity and more than 500,000 square feet of data-center space across a four-phase build-out. The project is anchored by an existing 82,000-square-foot data-center shell on a 28-acre parcel that already has more than 40 megawatts of available power, with room to expand onto an adjacent 32-acre parcel as later phases proceed; Evoque has cited a roughly $200 million investment tied to the project, including a stated commitment toward a fully renewable power supply for the site.

For a land buyer, the practical point is that this is not a one-off project but an emerging cluster: two separately owned hyperscale data-center campuses now sit side by side in the same Gallatin growth corridor, with the infrastructure, land-assembly pattern, and precedent that tends to attract further similar proposals to adjacent or nearby parcels. If you're evaluating land in or near this corridor for any purpose -- residential, agricultural, or speculative -- treat continued large-scale industrial and data-center interest in the immediate area as a live, ongoing variable rather than a settled, one-time event.

Zoning response: the county says its rules already cover this; Gallatin's own council is actively debating more

Tennessee saw a wave of local data-center moratoriums and new siting ordinances move through Middle Tennessee governments in 2026, including in Nashville/Davidson County. Sumner County's own government responded differently: rather than adopting a new moratorium, county officials told local news that Sumner County already has strict zoning parameters in place that it believes are sufficient to prevent an unexpected data-center proposal from moving forward without review. That's a meaningful data point layered on top of the county's own 2023 Zoning Resolution and its 2024 Rural Preservation district amendment covered on the hub -- it tells you the county considers data-center siting a zoning-district and conditional-use question under its existing framework, not a gap that needs a brand-new ordinance.

The City of Gallatin -- a separate jurisdiction from unincorporated Sumner County, and the government that actually annexed and approved both hyperscale projects described above -- has been actively weighing its own response as of mid-2026, including discussion of a data-center moratorium, zoning-code changes, and reclassification of rural land specifically in response to the pace of data-center interest following the Meta and Evoque/Archer projects. As of this pass's research, that discussion had not been confirmed as resolved into a final adopted ordinance one way or the other. For any parcel inside Gallatin's city limits or its extraterritorial growth area, that means the applicable zoning rules for a large-acreage or industrial-adjacent parcel could look meaningfully different a year from now than they do today.

What to check before buying land in this corridor

• Confirm with the City of Gallatin Planning Department whether any data-center moratorium, new siting ordinance, or rural-land rezoning has since been adopted, since that mid-2026 discussion was still open as of this page's research.
• For unincorporated parcels, confirm with the Sumner County Regional Planning Commission which zoning district and conditional-use standards currently govern industrial or data-center-adjacent uses under the 2023 Zoning Resolution and its 2024 amendments.
• If evaluating land specifically because of proximity to the Meta or Evoque/Archer campuses -- whether for the tax-base and employment upside or out of concern about utility, noise, or environmental impact -- get current, dated information on both projects' status and any expansion plans rather than relying on figures from a single news snapshot.
• Ask directly about electricity and water infrastructure capacity for a specific parcel; hyperscale data-center development in the immediate area can affect both the availability and the cost of extending utility service to nearby land, in either direction.