A 900-acre expansion to Project Marvel, a data center project in Bessemer, Alabama, has received a recommendation of approval from the local planning commission.

Bessemer’s City Council still needs to approve the expansion before it can go ahead.

A development plan for an early version of Project Marvel was approved by the Bessemer City Council last November.

The expansion, if approved, would bring the total size of the campus up to 1,600 acres, effectively doubling the size of the original plan. It would also increase the number of data center buildings to 18, offering 1.2GW of capacity once built.

The developer, Logistic Land Investment LLC, is owned by Atlanta-based TPA Group.

The same company previously filed to build a data center in Venus, Texas, in July 2024.

Project Marvel has been met with opposition since its inception, and a public Facebook group called ‘Bessemer Data Center - We Say No!’ has been created to protest the development.

Located just outside of Birmingham, which is one of Alabama’s main data center hubs, Bessemer is a city in Jefferson County. Data Center Map currently lists no data centers in the city.