DC Blox Continues Expansion With 3 Southern Data Centers
Data center provider DC Blox is developing a trio of new data centers across the South, expanding its pipeline even as the firm backs out of a previously announced project in Virginia.
The Atlanta-based firm unveiled plans last week for three new 5-megawatt edge data centers in North Augusta, South Carolina, and Huntsville and Montgomery, Alabama, with the Montgomery facility capable of being expanded to as much as 40 MW.
The three facilities have all been preleased to the same hyperscale client, according to DC Blox, although it didn't name the tenant.
Since its founding eight years ago, DC Blox has focused primarily on building colocation and connectivity-focused data centers in small Southeastern markets like Birmingham and Huntsville, Alabama, and Chattanooga, Tennessee. The firm also has a significant footprint in the optical fiber business, building and operating networks to send data from smaller Southern markets into Atlanta, and it operates its own subsea cable landing station in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
The company has embarked on an expansion effort over the past year across Southern markets. A second Atlanta-area project is in the works in Conyers, Georgia, while data centers in High Point, North Carolina, and Berkeley County, South Carolina, are in development as well. DC Blox is also building a second cable landing station in Myrtle Beach as well as a new cable landing station in Palm Coast, Florida.
A portion of that development is being funded through a capital raise and debt issuance that closed last month.
The company raised incremental equity capital from new and existing investors in a funding round led by Post Road Group and Bain Capital Credit. The raise was intended to enable the deployment of more than $1B in capital to finance future construction and powered land banking opportunities focused on hyperscale projects, according to the firm.
At the same time, DC Blox announced it had secured a $265M green credit facility partly to develop multiple preleased hyperscale-driven edge sites like the Alabama and South Carolina projects announced last week. The debt capital is also being used to invest in the energy infrastructure for 216 MW of power from a utility at an unnamed development site already in DC Blox’s pipeline.
Amid this expansion push, the company is dropping previously announced plans for a data center near Richmond, Virginia, according to Data Center Dynamics.
The project, first announced in August, was intended to be a $500M build-out on 32 acres, with a capacity that could eventually reach as much as 50 MW. But the facility encountered local pushback due to concerns over backup diesel generators and potential noise. Local officials recommended denying the project, leading DC Blox to withdraw the application last week.
