Tiny Louisiana parish becomes AI boomtown as Meta builds $10B data center: 'It's changing fast'

RICHLAND PARISH — The S Mart in Bee Bayou has always done a brisk business.

It's the only convenience store for miles amid the corn and soybean fields that line the old two-lane La. 80 in rural northeast Louisiana, and the only place to get heaping to-go plates of fried chicken gizzards with mac and cheese.

But everything suddenly changed this year — ever since Facebook parent company Meta broke ground on a $10 billion artificial intelligence data center in the middle of a cornfield in nearby Holly Ridge.

Now the store is slammed. Construction workers in neon safety vests stream in nonstop for food, ice, cigarettes and gas. Sales have more than tripled. Store manager Ann Watson, 70, a Bee Bayou native, can't hire enough workers to staff the store’s shifts.

“We’re so busy we don’t ge