Company Planning Huge Data Center in Palm Coast for Undersea Internet Cables, But Flagler Beach Trip Over Easements
By FlaglerLive
April 5, 2024
Last October, Florida Landmark Communities sold a 34-acre tract of land in Palm Coast’s Town Center, on the west side of Town Center Boulevard and just south of Royal Palms Parkway, to an Atlanta-based data center company called DC Box for $3.5 million. DC Blox is planning to build a massive data center at that location, though those plans remain under wraps in Palm Coast.
“It is a state-qualified economic development project we are required to keep confidential,” a city spokesperson said today of a project cheekily called Project Orchid. County officials panicked late Friday afternoon when they got word that the project would be revealed here.
Little about it is confidential anymore. The data center depends on being a landing point for up to eight undersea cables, also called submarine communications cables that would make landfall at two spots in Flagler Beach and weave their way underground to Palm Coast’s Town Center–assuming Flagler Beach were to grant the company the necessary easements.
Those submarine cables are the backbone of the internet, carrying 95 percent of all data communications in the world. They need a place to land, from where they fan into data centers that in turn fan out through different forms of communications. Flagler Beach and Palm Cast would be among just 45 such landing points on the American east coast.
But the Flagler Beach City Commission is opposed to granting one of the two easements DC Blox is seeking in the city, because it would all but make development impossible on one of its prime beachside parcels.
That’s making Palm Coast Nervous: Chief of Staff Jason deLorenzo was seen speaking about it with a Flagler Beach city commissioners at an unrelated event in Bunnell this week: Palm Coast wants its data center, and DC Blox wants its easement. But it appears that the ground wasn’t well prepared for the proposal when it came to light at a Flagler Beach city commission meeting last week. The commission is deferring its decision.
