Residents of the small city of Social Circle, about 45 miles east of Atlanta learned last week that the Department of Homeland Security is buying a warehouse in the city to be used as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility. What will it take to transform a warehouse like the one that was just purchased into something that can house human beings? Eric Kronberg is founder and principal at Kronberg Urbanists + Architects in Atlanta. He spoke with GPB’s Peter Biello.
Peter Biello: We’ve seen estimates that this just over a million-square-foot warehouse could be transformed into a space that houses ICE detainees as soon as April. In your view, is that logistically possible, given the changes that the warehouse might need to house human beings?
Eric Kronberg: So I think the fundamental question of the logistics is what level of approvals or permissions are needed. There’s a lot of work to put in plumbing and walls. And I’m sure it’s probably more of a prison than an apartment complex in terms of layout. All that’s hard. But if the federal government is waiving all inspections, you can do a lot of things quickly, for better or worse.
Peter Biello: Does the federal government have to abide by local inspection and zoning rules, or can it just steamroll through in the name of national security or some other pressing national priority?
Eric Kronberg: Absolutely. I mean, the federal government has autonomy. Other good examples I was thinking about is when we had a section of I-85 collapse here in Atlanta, how the state prioritized that as a rebuild and Pennsylvania recently had a section of elevated highway collapse. If the government puts its mind to it, they can really waive inspections, requirements, and/or have inspectors on site all 24 hours a day to get something done faster. So it’s really what parameters do you establish at the federal or state level?
Peter Biello: And you say when “the government puts its mind to it,” do you mean both the federal and state government have to sort of work in concert or can the federal government say, “We don’t care what you think, Georgia, we’re doing this anyway”?
Eric Kronberg: Particularly with this administration, I think it’s more of how you laid it out. … We do more state and local work, but my expectation is that if the federal government wants to claim jurisdiction, they have the ability to do that. I mean, I think that it’s also fair that you can try to sue to slow them down, but you know that seems to be the game that this government plays.
Peter Biello: So under ordinary circumstances, how much would local opinion matter for a building like this? Would builders or developers have to sort of win over the hearts and minds of the people living nearby for it to actually go forward?
Eric Kronberg: If it was simply a local project, there’s zoning permissions and then building approval permissions. Really, land use and development is a highly political process and there are all kinds of ways, if a local community does not like a project, for voices to be raised to stop things happening, without a doubt. When it’s a state project, the state has a lot more autonomy within the state boundaries to deploy things that are in the state interest. But also just to be clear, cities do not have to abide by their own zoning laws, right? If the City of Atlanta, as an example, felt it was in their interest just to go build something, they have that legal authority within their bounds. They typically choose not to do that and go through an engagement process, but they’re legally permitted to not follow their own rules and their own boundaries.
Peter Biello: Mmm. So what does that mean for a place like Social Circle?
Eric Kronberg: It would be interesting to watch the federal government force the city to connect utilities. And if you’re a small city like Social Circle, you may not have much choice, but if you have an existing warehouse, that connection between the public realm of the city and the private building is already in place. It may not be adequate, honestly, for taking a warehouse to house humans. So there’s interesting, like, where does the purview of the federal government stop? Where is the purview the city intermixed? There is a joining of some point. And I don’t know how much power Social Circle will have, practically, at that kind of intersection or not.
Peter Biello: The warehouse could hold up to 10,000 people, and that would effectively triple the population of Social Circle. What do you think that would mean for the city when it comes to available water treatment and wastewater management? I mean, it’s likely that the water has to be processed going in and coming out somehow.
Eric Kronberg: Yeah, absolutely. In a warehouse, you talk about occupant loads and how many people would be in the building and the facility, and a warehouse might have — maybe that’s 50 or 100 people is the occupancy designed for a structure like that. It’s a fraction of the people that we’re putting in. And the number of human occupants, that’s the driver of water usage, right? For toilets, for showers, for cooking, cleaning. That’s a massive increase in facilities. I do not have knowledge of the sewer capacity of Social Circle, but that could be a massive strain on that. I mean, things we’re seeing — shifting a little bit to warehouses for AI — a lot of these are providing their own power generation with gas turbines in Texas and other places because there’s not local capacity of the infrastructure to provide what they’re doing. But that’s just power for bits and electrons flying around. That is not actually housing humans. And so it’s entirely possible that there is just no water available, not nearly enough water available to serve this facility, or would amazingly stress the infrastructure of Social Circle — and I’d be shocked to imagine that it wouldn’t. No city that we know has massive excess capacity of water or sewer, just about anywhere in the country.
This story comes to The Current GA through a reporting partnership with GPB News, a non-profit newsroom covering the state of Georgia.