Inside the Uptown data center no one noticed until now
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Inside one of Digital Realty's Uptown data centers. Photo: Alexandria Sands/Axios
Charlotte is talking a lot about AI-powering data centers lately. But one has existed in Uptown, largely unnoticed, for two decades.
Why it matters: Since AI feels invisible, data centers like this one have become one of the most tangible representations of the AI debate, which has evolved beyond NIMBYism and your Duke bill to doomsday warnings of human extinction.
Reality check: These facilities aren't new, and we became dependent on them long before ChatGPT. They power everything from banking and online shopping to Hollywood and emergency services.
Behind the scenes: I toured Digital Realty's Uptown data center between Trade and Fifth streets, which opened in 2006.
- Unlike the expansive, windowless warehouses that are driving debates, the smaller Uptown campus looks like ordinary office buildings.
- It's a "carrier hotel," a centrally located data center where fiber, internet and telecom providers intersect to quickly move data.
- That explains why there's a data center with only six to seven workers in the heart of the city.
- Its major customers include financial institutions and cloud service providers but it declined to disclose specific tenants.
Inside the room: Loud white noise fills the space, but you can't hear it from outside the double doors, let alone the brick building.
- The sound comes from HVAC and fans blowing cold air into cabinets of computing equipment. This containment method is one way Digital Realty reduces power usage, by only cooling parts of the room.
Overhead and underneath the floor, water circulates through pipes and chillers on the roof to produce the cool air.
- This closed-loop system is costlier but often preferred over an open-loop system, though it does use more power, says Robert Cox of UNC Charlotte's Energy Production and Infrastructure Center.
- Digital Realty employees tell me they recall only topping off the water tank once due to a slow leak.
- "From a PR perspective, I think they recognize that they should be adopting best practices," Cox says.
The intrigue: Data centers are highly secure due to the customers they can serve, but that secretiveness has contributed to the backlash and mystery around them.
- But as scrutiny about data centers grows nationwide, Digital Realty is inviting more press and officials inside. It brought in the city's data center task force this week, too.
Driving the news: Charlotte has enacted a moratorium on new data centers while city staff study zoning regulations to address concerns about their locations, aesthetics, noise and water usage.
- They're effectively playing catch-up since data centers are popping up faster than most policymakers can understand them.
Between the lines: The temporary ban does not halt already approved projects.
- Amid the AI boom, Digital Realty is working on multiple new centers, including two 200-megawatt, 1.3 million-square-foot buildings off Moores Chapel Road in west Charlotte with a new Duke Energy substation paid for by the developer.
- And it's adding a fourth building in Uptown: 200,000 square feet, 12 MW — in addition to the existing roughly 100,000 square feet, with 2 MW.
What they're saying: Douglas Welton, the city's planning commission chair, says some task force members want community benefits in return for future data centers, such as involving minority- or women-owned contractors during construction or asking developers to set aside land for parks.
- "I believe there's a very easy … set of conclusions that can be reached once you get past the misinformation and the hysteria," Welton says, adding that he's eyeing buffering and adjacency requirements himself.
- Rafal Rak, Digital Realty's senior vice president on the development team, says data centers are already advancing to more efficient practices.
- Some newer ones, he says, run closed-loop water systems through the cabinets, eliminating the need for fans to blow out air.
The big picture: The data center boom isn't just a result of ChatGPT or Claude. It's AI being integrated into internet searches and the way we work, an explosion of new apps and media, and "just an overall increase in data that we generate," Rak says.
- It's another effect of Charlotte's growth, too.
- When big companies expand here, they're asking for space in these types of facilities.
- Digital Realty calls Charlotte a "leading data center market," along with northern Virginia, Dallas, Atlanta, the New York metro and Silicon Valley.
The bottom line: Data center developers are finding ways to improve operations and relations so they can continue meeting the demands of the world we live in.
- But it may not be enough to solve a PR crisis when you're up against warnings of humanity's demise.