1. Gallatin just annexed 125 acres next door to Meta.

On July 9, the Gallatin City Council approved the annexation of roughly 125 acres west of Brights Lane and south of Highway 31 East — directly adjacent to Meta's data center campus, which already spans more than 900 acres and is one of the largest in Tennessee (WSMV, 7/9/26). No official purpose was stated in the resolutions. One council member said the land "looks perfect to extend for a new data center."

Let me be straight about what's confirmed and what isn't, because that matters in my business. Meta has announced no plans for that land and didn't respond to media inquiries. Annexation is not a rezoning, and it's not a sale. But cities don't annex raw acreage beside a hyperscale campus for the paperwork. Annexation is how a municipality positions ground for utilities, services, and the development it wants inside its tax base. If you own land in that corridor, the map just moved in your favor — and the county comps don't reflect it yet.

2. TVA is planning for a different-sized grid.

TVA's new draft long-range plan — the 2026 Integrated Resource Plan, released in late June — contemplates adding between 7 and 26 gigawatts of new natural gas generation, driven overwhelmingly by data center and large industrial demand (Utility Dive; Appalachian Voices, 6/22/26). The top of that range is a staggering number; it would rank among the largest gas buildouts any U.S. utility has proposed.

Why should a landowner care about a utility planning document? Because generation doesn't work without transmission. New plants mean new corridors, new substations, and new gas infrastructure — and every one of those makes nearby parcels data-center-eligible that weren't last year. Proximity to deliverable power is now a land attribute the same way road frontage and soils have always been. Most sellers don't price it. Sophisticated buyers absolutely do. That gap is where landowners leave money on the table.

3. The siting race is statewide — and it's being mapped.

Tennessee Lookout published a map on July 10 counting 62 operating data centers in Tennessee and 16 more proposed — Google in Clarksville, Meta in Gallatin, and xAI in Memphis among the anchors. The competition for sites with power, water, and fiber is real, and Middle Tennessee counties — Sumner, Montgomery, Wilson, Rutherford, Maury — are squarely in it.

Two honest caveats. First, the pushback is real: Gallatin neighbors have reported construction noise and stormwater runoff, some home buyers have walked away from contracts near the campus, and the same council member who praised the annexed land has floated a two-year moratorium on new data center construction. ThinkTennessee reports residential electric bills rising faster in areas with data centers. Political risk now belongs in the underwriting of every one of these deals, on both sides of the table. Second, most land will never be a data center site. Power, water, fiber, topography, and clean title all have to line up, and they rarely do. The point is not that your farm is worth hyperscale money. The point is that you can't know what your land is worth until someone actually runs that screen.

What I'd do if I owned land out here

Landowners in these corridors are starting to get unsolicited calls and option letters. If one lands in your mailbox, don't sign anything before you understand how the buyer is underwriting. Data center developers and their land agents think in dollars per megawatt of deliverable power and in months of entitlement risk — not in dollars per acre against last year's farm comps. An option payment that looks generous next to agricultural values can be a fraction of what the site is worth as infrastructure. The structure matters as much as the number: option term, extension rights, what triggers closing, and who carries the entitlement risk.

This is the difference between pricing land like a listing and pricing it like an asset. A listing gets compared to the neighbors. An asset gets valued on what it can produce — and in 2026, what Middle Tennessee land can produce increasingly depends on where it sits relative to power.

If you own acreage in Sumner, Montgomery, Wilson, Rutherford, or anywhere in the sixteen Middle Tennessee counties I cover, and you want to know which side of the power map you're on, that's exactly the analysis I do — before anyone signs anything.

— Ross Welch, Zeitlin Sotheby's International Realty

Sources: WSMV (Gallatin annexation, 7/9/26); Tennessee Lookout (data center map, 7/10/26); Utility Dive and Appalachian Voices (TVA 2026 IRP); ThinkTennessee (utility bill data). Meta's plans for the annexed acreage are unconfirmed as of publication.