If you farm or own acreage in central Kentucky, you have probably heard the talk by now. A battery plant at Glendale pivoting toward power infrastructure. Utilities fielding calls about as many as 30 data-center projects across the state. Louisville landing a hyperscale campus. And somewhere in the back of your mind, a quiet question: could that be my ground — is that data-center-ready land in Kentucky?
It is a fair question, and it deserves a straight answer instead of a pitch. Not every pretty pasture is a data-center site. Most are not. But the parcels that do fit the profile are suddenly trading in a different asset class than they were eighteen months ago, and a lot of Kentucky landowners are sitting on the ingredients without knowing it.
So here is a plain checklist. Six things a hyperscaler or an edge developer actually looks for in data-center-ready land in Kentucky — the same boxes we walk through at the kitchen table before we ever talk price. Read it against your own place. If you check most of these, it is worth a conversation.
1. Enough Contiguous, Buildable Ground — Usually 300+ Acres
Scale is the first filter. A hyperscale campus wants room to grow: multiple buildings, cooling yards, substation space, security setbacks, and a buffer between the operation and the neighbors. That is why the big operators start looking hard around 300 or more contiguous acres under a single ownership or an assemblable group.
Contiguous matters as much as the acreage. Four hundred acres split by a creek, a gas easement, and three separate deeds is a harder story than 300 clean acres in one boundary. And it has to be buildable — not half sinkhole, floodplain, or slope you can not put a slab on. Karst and floodplain are real constraints in this part of Kentucky, so a parcel that drains and compacts well is worth more than its raw size suggests.
Smaller sites are not out of the game. A 40-to-100-acre tract can suit an edge facility, which we cover in our piece on the 40-acre footprint reshaping central Kentucky. But if you own several hundred acres in one boundary, you own the rarest ingredient on this list.
2. A Substation or Transmission Line Within Reach — With Headroom
This is the one that makes or breaks a site, and it is the one landowners underestimate most. Data centers are, first and last, power customers. A single campus can pull as much electricity as a small city. The question is never just “is there a power line nearby” — it is “is there a substation with spare capacity, or high-voltage transmission you can tie into, close enough that the interconnection does not cost a fortune or take five years.”
Proximity to a 138 kV, 161 kV, or 345 kV line is a genuine asset. So is being inside a utility’s service area where the co-op or investor-owned utility has headroom instead of a queue. We break down why this is the deciding factor — and how TVA and the local co-ops fit in — in our deeper look at Kentucky data-center power and substations. If you can see transmission towers from your back field, you are already ahead of most sellers.
3. A Gas Trunk Line You Can Tap
Power is the headline, but many operators want natural gas on site too — for backup generation, for on-site power, and increasingly to run their own generation ahead of a grid interconnection. An interstate or large-diameter gas trunk crossing or bordering your property is a meaningful checkmark.
The I-65 corridor and the industrial ground around Glendale sit near real gas infrastructure, which is a big part of why Hardin County keeps coming up in these conversations. We walk through that corridor in detail in our Glendale and Hardin County breakdown. If a pipeline right-of-way runs through or beside your land, note it — it counts.
4. Water — Enough of It, and a Way to Return It
Cooling takes water, and a large campus can use a lot of it. What a developer wants to know is simple: is there a municipal water main or a serious well capacity nearby, and is there a path for wastewater or cooling discharge? A parcel near a water district’s main line, a river, or an existing industrial water tap is far more attractive than one that would need miles of new pipe.
Not every operator needs heavy water — newer closed-loop and air-cooled designs use far less. But water access still separates a strong site from a marginal one, and it is worth knowing what serves your ground before someone else asks.
5. Fiber — Ideally More Than One Carrier
A data center that can not move data is just an expensive building. Operators want diverse fiber: two or more carriers with routes near the property, so a single cut does not take the campus offline. Being close to an interstate helps here, because long-haul fiber tends to follow the highways — one more reason the I-65 spine keeps drawing interest.
You will not always know what fiber runs past your place, and that is fine. It is one of the first things we check on a parcel. But if you already know a carrier’s conduit follows the road out front, that is a selling point worth raising.
6. Zoning You Can Actually Get — By-Right or Cleanly Rezonable
Last, and very underrated: the zoning and entitlement posture. A developer on a clock does not want a two-year rezoning fight with an uncertain outcome. Land that is already zoned industrial — or that sits in a jurisdiction with a clear, supportive path to rezone — is worth more than agricultural ground where the county has signaled it will say no.
That posture varies sharply county to county across Kentucky. Some communities are courting this development; a meaningful minority are moving fast to restrict it. The tax side matters too: Kentucky’s HB 775 incentives and Opportunity Zone overlays can make a qualifying project far more attractive, and some of the strongest corridors sit inside Opportunity Zones. Knowing your county’s stance — and your parcel’s incentive eligibility — is part of the readiness picture.
Score Your Own Ground
Run your place against the six. Contiguous buildable scale. Power with headroom. A gas trunk. Water. Fiber. Workable zoning. You do not need a perfect six to have something worth talking about — three or four strong checkmarks, especially power and scale, is enough to put your parcel on a developer’s short list.
None of this is theoretical for us. The developer calls coming into Action Advisors are no longer the vague “where could you put a data center” kind. They are specific: which parcels in a given service area have ready power within a short transmission distance, workable zoning, and carrier fiber within reach. We put the full picture together in our overview of the Kentucky data-center industry and HB 775. The land is being evaluated as a composite asset now — the parcel plus the substation plus the pipeline plus the zoning posture, all treated as one.
Curious Where Your Parcel Stands?
If you own or manage acreage anywhere along the I-65 corridor and any of this rang a bell, the honest next step is a look at your specific ground — power distance, zoning path, fiber, the composite. That is exactly the read we do. You can also see what commercial and industrial inventory is moving in your area right now as a gut check on the market:
- Elizabethtown & I-65 corridor commercial land and buildings
- Radcliff commercial and industrial listings
- Glendale-area commercial inventory near the megasite
- Hodgenville and LaRue County commercial ground
- Bullitt County commercial and industrial land
When you are ready, reach out and we will evaluate your parcel against the checklist — no pressure, no obligation, just a straight read on whether your land fits what these operators are actually buying.
Grayson Bryan is a commercial and residential agent with Action Advisors and eXp Realty in Elizabethtown, Kentucky. The Action Advisors team — Jeff Farmer, Rebecca Carter, and Grayson Bryan — works the I-65 corridor between Louisville and Bowling Green.
Related reading: Kentucky’s Data Center Boom: 30 Projects & HB 775 | Inside the I-65 Corridor: Glendale & Hardin County | Edge Data Centers: The 40-Acre Footprint