Before the public outcry over DC BLOX's proposed 23.5-acre data center campus to sit adjacent to the Nashville Zoo, the Atlanta-based digital infrastructure developer met with Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s office.
At that meeting in February, the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Community Development advised the company that the location needed to be discussed with the zoo and the district councilmember, according to Alex Apple, a spokesperson for the mayor.
Apple says DC BLOX requested a follow-up meeting with the mayor’s ECD office. In March, when the two groups met again, the mayor's office declined to offer incentives for the project.
Relatedly, DC BLOX didn’t meet with Nashville Zoo officials before the project was announced.
Instead, the zoo learned about the estimated $700 million data center campus the same way as everyone else: through a May 20 news article, according to Leah Trice, the zoo's spokesperson.
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The Nashville Zoo has since launched a petition to stop construction of the data center, which has reached roughly 523,000 signatures.
“We are doing everything in our power to prevent the center from being built [at the proposed location],” Trice tells Scene sister publication the Nashville Post. “We have until July 6 to stop them. We are asking the public to please sign our petition that just reached half a million signatures, and to please reach out to city decision-makers to put pressure on the sale of this property.”
On the same day news broke about the proposed data center, DC BLOX announced that it had expanded its green senior secured credit facilities loan to $850 million. That figure more than triples the original $265 million the company secured in October 2024.
The funds are backed by Future Standard, a Philadelphia-based alternative asset manager with $93 billion in assets under management.
Trice says the zoo’s lawyers are currently in contact with DC BLOX. Neither Trice nor mayor's office spokesperson Apple previously was aware of the data center developer's financial backing. But they say it didn’t change their opposition to the project.
Since the controversy erupted, two pieces of Metro legislation have been proposed that could halt DC BLOX's project. Councilmember Rollin Horton's bill restricts the size and location of data centers, and a separate ordinance imposes a temporary moratorium on data center permits, which the Metro Council advanced to second reading on June 9.
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O'Connell also recently signed Executive Order 59, directing Metro agencies to study the impacts of data centers and develop a regulatory framework. A proposed data center at Fisk University has also drawn fierce opposition, part of a wave of anti-data-center sentiment sweeping the country.
A May Gallup poll found that seven in 10 Americans oppose constructing data centers in their local area, with nearly half strongly opposed.
Jeff Uphues, DC BLOX's CEO, appeared on the Let’s Get Digital podcast on May 13.
“Once you start explaining the tax base impact on schools and the community, people really understand,” Uphues said on the podcast. “When we now go into communities, people respond to the fact that we're transparent from the beginning. We answer questions without technology speak. We meet person by person, group by group, town hall by town hall. We invest the time.”
DC BLOX did not respond to a request for comment.
This article was first published by our sister publication, the Nashville Post.
