Early next year, Google will link a small city in Northeast Florida to Europe. If all goes to plan, the tech giant will submerge a massive fiber-optic cable under the waves off Flagler Beach. From there, it will snake roughly 5,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean to Santander, Spain.
The project is part of Google’s multibillion-dollar effort to meet growing demand for its cloud and artificial intelligence services. The new subsea internet cable — dubbed “Sol,” the Spanish word for “sun” — will plug into a facility known as a cable landing station in Palm Coast.
DC Blox, the infrastructure provider behind the site, considers the building a carrier-neutral data center, host to equipment for a range of telecom companies.
Although Google is the first to land a cable at the station — what’s essentially a digital port — the building has room for five more. Atlanta-based DC Blox is courting other so-called hyperscaler clients, dominant tech names, such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, whose cloud services support the global AI build-out.
Subsea cables form the backbone of the connected world. They transmit approximately 95% of all data and digital communications across continents. And they’re not cheap. Google hasn’t publicly disclosed what it’s spending to bring Sol online, but similar projects have cost the company between $300 million and $1 billion. DC Blox expects to pour more than $100 million over time into the supporting facility.
This is all good news to Palm Coast and Flagler Beach officials, who tout the investments as a first step toward attracting advanced industry to the region. Some of their constituents, who feel they’ve had few opportunities to challenge the project, are less optimistic.
Their concerns come amid a national backlash against data center construction and a raging debate about what a high-tech project affords a community and what it can disrupt.
Why here, and why now?
Behind every instant message, digital transaction and chatbot query is an underwater cable. The global network of these information superhighways keeps modern life chugging along. And as the world becomes more digitized, tech companies are racing to expand the connective capacity of their underlying infrastructure.
Subsea cables are heavily armored and buried in shallow water to protect them from fishing nets, ship anchors and other potential disruptors. They follow planned routes, connecting to coastal landing stations, such as the one coming to Palm Coast.
Investment into new subsea cable projects is projected to reach about $13 billion between 2025 and 2027, CNBC previously reported. That’s nearly double the sum spent between 2022 and 2024, according to data provider TeleGeography.
A flurry of recent domestic projects has been concentrated along the East Coast, in states such as Virginia, New York, New Jersey, and increasingly, Florida. DC Blox, the company behind the Palm Coast Cable Landing Station, completed a similar system in 2023, anchored in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
Florida’s coast, while a growing magnet for such projects, is a largely untapped market, according to Bill Thomson, vice president of marketing and product management for DC Blox.
Palm Coast, situated between other landing stations along the Southeast, was a prime location for the firm to expand its reach, Thomson said, adding that the region’s utility providers were much more amenable to the project than those DC Blox has worked with in other markets.
And that’s critical. The viability of any data center or similar piece of digital infrastructure hinges on sustainable access to water and electricity.
Large AI data centers consume up to 100 megawatts of electricity per day. The sprawling warehouses, which contain computers prone to overheating, require as much as 5 million gallons of water daily for cooling.
DC Blox has promised an energy-efficient facility. The company says its Palm Coast data center — which serves AI clients but is not in the business of training models itself — will draw water from a closed-loop cooling system that continuously recirculates fluid. It also stressed that the building’s power needs fit within the capacity constraints of the local grid.
Palm Coast, for its part, has invested heavily in fortifying its utilities. The city council approved a $330 million bond package earlier this year, as part of a capital improvement program to address aging infrastructure.
The threat of resource depletion is at the crux of the anti-data center movement rippling across the country. Ratepayers worry the facilities demand more energy than an already stressed grid can accommodate, forcing utilities to hike rates.
Florida lawmakers in March passed a bill imposing significant restrictions on the development of large AI data centers. Other states, including nearby Georgia, are weighing legislation designed to restrict new data center construction. Maine in April would have become the first state to enact an outright ban, before the state’s governor vetoed the legislation.
When DC Blox approached Florida Power & Light with the project’s expected energy needs, the local utility said it would not require any grid upgrades, according to Thomson. As the facility grows, DC Blox will not exceed the power bounds it already agreed to and paid for, he added.
“We don’t get to just say, ‘oh, well, we’re going to need another 50 megawatts, you know, deal with it,’” Thomson said. “I mean, we have to commit to that up front, and if there’s additional infrastructure that needs to be built — for example, new substations or new transmission lines — we pay for it.”
A wary public isn’t yet convinced.
Karolyn Quianthy said her utility bill is already sky-high. Despite assurances from DC Blox, the 61-year-old legal secretary, who moved to Palm Coast in 2023, worries things will only get worse as big tech starts to encroach on what she characterized as an otherwise sleepy town.
Quianthy, whose family lives in a small home near Palm Coast’s Town Center — where the data center is slated for construction — said her monthly electric bill is nearly $300. That’s more than double the national average, hovering at around $135, according to the latest data from Heatmap, a climate news outlet.
Floridians, who are known to crank up the AC during hot summer months, spend slightly more than many Americans, the data show.
Like some of her neighbors who have been vocal in their opposition to the project on Facebook and NextDoor, Quianthy said she’s lost faith in her city council to make decisions in the best interest of the community.
She’s also unsettled by the idea of welcoming a data center into her backyard.
“Even though I know it’s not AI, I don’t trust it,” Quianthy said. “I don’t trust what they’re doing.”
Residential electricity prices have risen sharply in the past decade. A dramatic spike beginning in 2022 coincides with the release of ChatGPT, which triggered the current AI boom and the subsequent data-center buildout. (Natalie Kaufman/WUFT)
Measuring returns
The city of Palm Coast officially announced the cable system last July, about a year after formal talks began with DC Blox and Google, according to public records reviewed by WUFT.
Rick Vitrano, a retired nurse who has lived in Palm Coast since 2024, said he and fellow residents felt left in the dark. Vitrano first learned of the project accidentally, he said, while researching the local real estate market.
“This was done stealthily,” Vitrano, 67, said. “I don’t believe that there has been sufficient information and public vetting to make any informed decision on it.”
The city initially determined that the landing station would exceed 40,000 square feet, which would have triggered a Tier 2 review and subjected the project to a public hearing. The facility was later scaled down and approved administratively.
A provision in state law allowing certain economic development initiatives to remain confidential for up to two years also shielded the plan from public view.
When negotiations are kept under wraps, communities are denied the ability to analyze the terms of a deal before they’re finalized, which can erode trust in government, according to Zachary Bunner, a graduate researcher with FSU’s Center for Economic Forecasting and Analysis.
“This matters not just as a democratic principle but as a practical one because public deliberation creates pressure on officials to justify the terms they are accepting,” Bunner wrote in an email. “Without that pressure, deals tend to reflect the priorities of the parties directly at the table rather than the broader community.”
The project is largely private. Along with green loans and equity capital from a combination of investors, DC Blox has reportedly secured $240 million from BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Partners for the build-out. It’s unclear how much help the public sector will provide.
The landing station is considered a state-qualified economic development project, making it eligible for state and local economic incentives. Flagler Beach granted DC Blox a 35-year easement in 2024, allowing the company to install cables beneath the city in exchange for a $600,000 upfront payment and an additional $200,000 after a third cable is laid.
As for Palm Coast’s role in the financing, things are a bit murkier.
The first phase of the project did not receive any financial support from the city, according to Palm Coast’s economic development manager, Craig McKinney.
The land acquisition and project commitment were finalized independently, McKinney wrote in a statement to WUFT. When the city grants incentives, it considers the project’s total capital expenditure and its potential to create jobs, he added.
A city compliance program ensures that incentives are appropriate based on those metrics, McKinney said.
“While incentives are a strategic tool used to bridge gaps or remain competitive when a company is considering multiple locations for its investment, the fact that this project moved forward without a request for incentives is a strong indicator of our area’s strategic location and infrastructure readiness,” McKinney wrote in an emailed statement.
The city’s primary incentive vehicle is a performance-based grant tied to the project’s tax revenue generation. The landing station falls within Palm Coast’s community redevelopment area, a designated district granted special tax financing for beautification and other improvements.
Tax revenues generated at the site will be directly reinvested in the district, with figures publicly available through the county tax collector’s records, according to McKinney, who declined to quantify the full value of the incentives package.
“Transparency is a priority,” he said.
That revenue could be a lifeline. Florida legislators are considering eliminating non-school homestead property taxes. Removing those properties from the tax roll could substantially dent municipal budgets.
Palm Coast’s economic development office expects the cable landing station to generate several hundred thousand dollars in annual property tax revenue, which it plans to use for road capacity improvements, stormwater management and streetscape enhancements, McKinney said.
Data centers are frequently large property-tax contributors in their localities. That’s complicated, however, by the tax exemptions many receive, according to an analysis from the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank.
Plenty of alternatives, such as a manufacturing plant of similar size, would have been more accretive to the community, according to Alan Lowe, a Palm Coast resident who has run for mayor several times.
Lowe’s top economic priority is job creation, and he’s not impressed by what DC Blox can offer.
Post-construction, data centers don’t create many long-term jobs. The facility in Palm Coast is expected to staff between 10 and 12 people once online.
“It doesn’t have a big boost to the job market locally,” Lowe said. “It’s more of a feel-good project.”
Economic returns on large-scale infrastructure investments are notoriously challenging to quantify, said Evangeline Linkous, who directs the University of South Florida’s Master of Urban and Regional Planning program.
In theory, municipalities like to see property values, job opportunities and tax revenues increase. But it’s not always clear how much of those gains are directly tied to a capital investment, Linkous said.
Lingering questions
Google’s billions of customers are likely to capture some upside from the Palm Coast project and its promise of enhanced internet connectivity. But that shouldn’t come at the expense of those on the ground, said Michael Hicks, an economics professor at Ball State University.
Google didn’t respond to several requests for comment.
There aren’t many justifications for state and local governments to grant incentives for private infrastructure projects, Hicks said. DC Blox and Google would likely have pursued the project regardless of the help they’ve been offered.
“This is called the but-for question,” Hicks said, referring to the economic concept used to determine if a project or investment would have occurred without government intervention. Research shows that about 3 in 4 projects granted incentives would have occurred without them.
The benefits unlocked through technological infrastructure — from productivity gains to information abundance — are wide-reaching, Hicks said.
“Those benefits probably flow to everybody, not to the local taxpayers,” he said. “And so if you’re going to [provide] incentives to build these, [the costs] ought to be borne by the American taxpayer, not the local Florida taxpayer.”
Communities often have more bargaining power in negotiations with tech giants than they think, said Nathan Jensen, a professor in the department of government at the University of Texas at Austin.
Land, for one, is a huge point of leverage, Jensen said. And Palm Coast, which sits between established subsea cable hubs in Jacksonville and Miami, makes it an especially attractive location for a new site.
“I don’t know if the communities don’t fully realize their power, or in some sense, they’re not interested in exerting their power,” Jensen said, adding that a similar dynamic bedevils local governments in Texas. Municipalities that sit atop land rich in oil and gas are quick to clear the way — and provide tax incentives for — petrochemical companies looking to lay pipelines.
Palm Coast weighed the trade-offs and made a decision that it believes aligns with the interests of its constituents, according to city councilman David Sullivan.
Although it’s still small, Palm Coast is one of Florida’s fastest-growing cities. And the cable system, part of a broader push to attract big tech to the region, could help put the city on the map, said Sullivan.
That vision won’t come without growing pains.
“There’s always people who feel that the government is bad and can’t do anything, and we’re not very smart, [and] we’re all taking money from developers and all that kind of stuff,” he said. “You have to fight your way through that.”