Digital Realty, the data center company already building a 400-megawatt campus in west Charlotte, says it bought land somewhere in the Charlotte area this summer for a second, even bigger project. It hasn’t said where.
In its third-quarter earnings release on Oct. 29, the Austin, Texas-based company listed land it bought “in the Charlotte metro area to support development of up to 600 megawatts of IT capacity.” That was one of several sites in $742 million of land purchases during the quarter. The others were near Indianapolis, Chicago and Atlanta and in Germany and Greece.
The release doesn’t give an address, a county, acreage or a price for the Charlotte-area site.
What Digital Realty disclosed
The company’s third-quarter financial supplement, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, lists the deal as a “600 MW Hyperscale Development.” The land is in the Charlotte metropolitan area, and the purchase date is July 2026. “Hyperscale” usually means very large facilities leased to big cloud and AI companies. The supplement doesn’t break out a price for each purchase. It gives only the $741.9 million total for all six land deals.
Another table in the supplement shows how much Charlotte land the company now holds for future building. At the end of September it listed 800 megawatts of future capacity on land in Charlotte. In its second-quarter supplement in July, the figure was 200 megawatts. The 600-megawatt jump matches the new purchase.
The same table shows 212 megawatts under construction in Charlotte. That capacity is 94% leased, and the company expects it to be finished in the second quarter of 2028.
$DLR
— Sig Forseti (@SigForseti) October 31, 2026
Digital Realty bought land in Charlotte in July for up to 600 MW of hyperscale capacity. Its Q3 build table now shows 212 MW under construction in Charlotte, 94% leased, due 2Q28.
That construction is part of Digital Realty’s campus off Moores Chapel Road near Charlotte Douglas International Airport. The company bought the 156-acre site for $160 million in 2024, and the city rezoned it in 2025. According to the Charlotte Observer, it’s planned for two buildings totaling 3 million square feet and up to 400 megawatts. Digital Realty is also paying for a Duke Energy substation to serve the site, the Observer reported in August. Permit records show it spending more than $53.5 million on that work.
On the Oct. 29 earnings call, CEO Andy Power called Charlotte “a similar example” to Kansas City, a market where the company could “create a runway for growth.” He said one of the largest leases in the company’s history was signed at the airport-area campus early this year to support AI work for a hyperscale customer he didn’t name. The executives didn’t say where the new land is.
$DLR: $742M Land Acquisition Signals Multi-Gigawatt Expansion
— Terminal Signals (@trmnl_data) October 29, 2026
• DLR quietly deployed $742M in Q3 land acquisitions across Indianapolis (1+ GW), Charlotte (600 MW), Chicago (360 MW), and Atlanta
Is it the Matthews site?
Many readers will think of Matthews first, because “600 megawatts” has been in local news before.
In 2025, developers Engineered Land Solutions and Crosland Southeast proposed Project Accelerate, a 123-acre data center campus on East John Street at Interstate 485. The Charlotte Observer reported it would need up to 600 megawatts of electricity. The plan drew packed town meetings and a petition with about 2,700 signatures, and the developers withdrew their rezoning request in October 2025. The town’s rezoning records list that petition as withdrawn on Oct. 13, 2025.
Since then, Engineered Land Solutions has moved on to a site in Stokes County, WFAE reported in January. The Matthews rezoning list doesn’t show a new data center application for the East John Street parcels. A separate Crosland Southeast petition covering some of the same land, which wasn’t for a data center, is listed as withdrawn in May 2026.
The two projects share a megawatt number, but Uptown Informer found no news report or town record linking Digital Realty to the Matthews land. For now, the Matthews site is only one possibility, and nothing confirms it.
Another July purchase
Digital Realty is known to have bought land in North Carolina in July, but it wasn’t in Mecklenburg County. The Richmond Observer, citing county GIS records, reported that a company called Digital Hamlet LP bought 403.82 acres on County Home Road north of Hamlet on July 23. State records list a business address that matches Digital Realty’s. The deed shows $20,167 in excise tax. North Carolina charges $1 for every $500 of a sale’s value, so that suggests a price of about $10 million.
Digital Realty told WSOC-TV it was “exploring opportunities for digital infrastructure development” in Richmond County. The company didn’t say how many megawatts the site could support. It also hasn’t said whether this is the “Charlotte metro” purchase in its earnings report. Richmond County is in the Sandhills, well outside the counties most people think of as the Charlotte area.
New Digital Realty land purchase raises questions near Richmond County school https://t.co/Ayd4661VY8
— WSOCTV (@wsoctv) July 29, 2026
Why the location matters
Rules for data centers depend on where they’re built. Charlotte City Council voted this week to extend the city’s data center moratorium to October 2027. The pause stops new data center permit approvals inside city limits but doesn’t affect projects that already have permits. The Observer reported that the Moores Chapel campus was already underway before the pause began. Towns such as Matthews set their own zoning, and nearby communities like Waxhaw have discussed pauses of their own.
A 600-megawatt campus would also need a large new supply of electricity from Duke Energy. Neighbors of earlier proposals have raised concerns about power bills, noise and water use. Until Digital Realty names the site or a deed or rezoning filing shows up, residents won’t know which town or county will review it.
Charlotte City Council votes tonight on whether to extend its temporary moratorium on new data center applications, a pause first adopted June 8 that is set to expire November 5.
— BigBird (@iBuildNC) October 26, 2026
Do you know where Digital Realty’s new Charlotte-area land is? Send tips to uptowninformer@gmail.com.