DC Blox: Camp Hall data center, Ridgeville, South Carolina

DC Blox, an Atlanta data center company, bought 27.5 acres in the Camp Hall commerce park near Ridgeville, in Berkeley County, South Carolina, from the state-owned utility Santee Cooper in 2023 for $4.7 million to build a proposed data center campus with about 45 megawatts of power. It never broke ground, and within months asked to trade up: an offer of about $17.7 million for a larger 64.5-acre parcel in the park's northwest corner, handing back its original land at no extra cost.

The bigger deal needed approval from the General Assembly's Joint Bond Review Committee, a panel of state legislators that must sign off on land sales at Camp Hall, which was expected to review it in March 2024. Santee Cooper's real estate director, Dan Camp, told the utility's board the bigger investment was being driven "by AI," saying, "because of the ... significant increase in demand for data centers, they stepped back and said, 'Is this big enough?'" Berkeley County Supervisor Johnny Cribb welcomed the project, saying Camp Hall "is proving to be a prime location for industrial development and investment in our County."

DC Blox's own website no longer lists a Camp Hall campus among its Southeast hyperscale sites, naming only Atlanta East, Atlanta West and Birmingham. The Joint Bond Review Committee's vote on the land swap was scheduled for March 2024, and no result has been published.