HIGH POINT – Atlanta-based DC BLOX, which constructs data centers to serve businesses across the Southeastern US, has purchased land in High Point and plans to construct a data center.  The company has entered a period of market assessment and land preparation along its planned, phased, development that includes five full-time employees with an average salary of $83,000.

The High Point Economic Development Corporation was involved in the process, as was the Guilford County Economic Development Alliance, according to a statement issued by the company.  The approximately 60,000 square-foot data center will be build near the intersection of Route 40 and 73 off the Piedmont Parkway, less than 10 miles from the Piedmont Triad International Airport.

“DC BLOX has chosen High Point to build a multi-tenant data center that could add more than $305 million to our tax base, which is the largest capital investment project for High Point in the 15 years since I have been with the High Point EDC,” said High Point Economic Development Interim Director Sandy Dunbeck.

According to a spokesperson for the company, the investment from DC BLOX includes more than $40 million in real property, $9.6 million of personal property, and more than $255.4 million of what the company called “induced customer investment” from the equipment of the client businesses of the company.

“The city and county agreed to property tax rate reductions of 50% over the incentives period, which is a minimum of 10 years, up to as many as 17 years, depending upon how long it takes to fill the data halls with clients,” said a spokesperson for the company. “DC BLOX customers would be responsible for paying tax value to DC BLOX proportionate to their server space within the facility, with the host company ultimately paying the tax bills.”

The data center will contain about 10 total employees once it is fully established, the company said, and said in an interview with WRAL TechWire that it prefers to hire local residents at its facilities.

The company says that its data center will be the first-of-its-kind in the Piedmont Triad, noting it plans to fully integrate and connect the facility to the company’s other regional data centers and connectivity partners, providing access to major public cloud providers.

“The DC BLOX High Point data center will serve the need for reliable Tier III-designed data centers for businesses in High Point, Greensboro and Winston-Salem,” reads marketing material shared by the company with WRAL TechWire. “Our data centers serve every industry, though DC BLOX often attracts healthcare, financial services, university and research institutions (for HPC applications), manufacturing, media companies, local and state government, and IT managed service providers.”

It will offer colocation for hosting primary IT infrastructure and secondary disaster recovery sites, as well as build out infrastructure for large-scale object storage solutions, it said.  The company said that it chose High Point and the Piedmont Triad due to a strong business climate, a growing and educated population, solid power and fiber network infrastructure, and broad industry representation.

DC BLOX describes the center as a “Tier III.”  For a description of data centers Tiers I-IV, check this site.