AWS Schoeneck data center, Hessen, Germany

Amazon Web Services has bought a 7.4-hectare plot in the Kilianstadten Nord II business park in Schoneck, in the Main-Kinzig district of Hesse, Germany, for a data center, and will pay the town more than 220 million euros for it, Mayor Carina Wacker announced in August 2026. The purchase contract was signed July 31, 2026, and AWS plans to start building in 2027.

AWS won the plot in an open bidding process in late 2025 and has announced investment of more than one billion euros. Schoneck, a town of just over 12,000 people northeast of Frankfurt, had expected a 2.27 million euro deficit for 2025. The town council adopted the development plan for the business park unanimously in June 2026, after pressing for a two story design to save land, the local Greens said.

The payment comes in stages: a down payment of 21.4 million euros, with the remaining 199 million euros due in the third quarter of 2027, depending on the main site works being finished and no successful legal challenge, which can be filed until July 4, 2027. Roads, paths and sewers for the business park are due by June 30, 2027, with AWS paying 81 percent of the 6.2 million euro cost.

A citizens' group, Bundnis lebenswertes Schoneck, has called the planning process chaotic and asked why crops were cleared from several fields during ground surveys, wondering if it was meant to drive off the endangered European hamster, whose presence could put the project at risk. The town council, the Gemeindevertretung, still has to decide how to spend the money; the SPD, Greens and WAS have proposed putting a large share into affordable housing.