DC BLOX Announces Data Center Deal in Flagler Beach

By FlaglerLive
August 23, 2024

Ending a four-month tangle of negotiations, and to Palm Coast’s immense relief, the Flagler Beach City Commission on Thursday approved a deal with an Atlanta-based DC Blox, a data-service company, that will allow it to use city rights-of-way to land undersea internet cables for $600,000, with a potential for up to an additional $750,000. There would be no subsequent payments.

The commission voted 4-1 to approve the deal with DC Blox, which is building a so-called cable landing station, or CLS, in Palm Coast, similar to one it built in Myrtle Beach, S.C., for up to six of the sort of undersea cables that form the backbone of the global internet. The deal protects all city assets from encroachment.

The deal is not absolutely final. DC Blox’s board must ratify it, and the final engineering plans must yet go before the City Commission to ensure that last-minute restrictions it is requiring are complied with. But based on Thursday’s concessions by both city commissioners and DC Blox officials, the deal is all but done.

DC Blox had originally offered the city $100,000 per cable, with two landing sites–one on 11th Street North and one south of the pier, either on 6th Street or at Veterans Park. The city objected both to the low offer and to the Veterans Park location, which would have prevented the city from using close to a third of the park in perpetuity.

DC Blox dropped the 11th Street option and agreed to limiting its cable locations to the right-of-way on South 6th Street, after initially hoping to use the city-owned parking lot there. But that would have prevented the city from developing the lot in the future, and city commissioners were not willing to let that happen.

Read more…