US aluminium producer Alcoa Corp. is in advanced talks to sell its former Massena East aluminum smelter in upstate New York to Bitcoin mining firm NYDIG.

The prospective sale comes as Alcoa seeks buyers for ten former smelter sites across the US, betting that growing demand from data center and digital infrastructure developers will increase the value of large, power-connected industrial campuses.

Located along the St. Lawrence River in Massena, New York, the site has access to hydropower from the New York Power Authority. Alcoa closed the smelter in 2014, citing a lack of competitiveness in the face of high energy costs and lower-cost overseas aluminum producers.

Speaking in an interview with Bloomberg on April 17, Alcoa CEO Bill Oplinger said the company is “close to a deal with NYDIG” for the site, and that the transaction “should be done in the middle part of this year.”

NYDIG has yet to comment on the matter.

The 1,600-acre former Reynolds Metals Facility was constructed in 1958. Reynolds was acquired by Alcoa in 2000.

Interest in such sites has increased alongside the expansion of AI and cloud computing, both of which are driving demand for land with existing grid access and high-capacity power infrastructure.

One former Alcoa smelting plant is already in the midst of being converted into a data center park. In Maryland, TPG Real Estate Partners (TREP) is developing a 2,100-acre, gigawatt-scale data center park some 25 miles (40.2km) north of Ashburn in Adamstown, Frederick County.

Former heavy industrial sites are increasingly being considered for reuse as data center campuses. Terra Hosting announced the acquisition of a former military base in Indiana in early April.

In February, Century Aluminum sold its Hawesville smelter in Kentucky to digital asset firm TeraWulf, which said it planned to develop the site into a digital infrastructure campus.

The potential transaction underlines the growing value of legacy industrial properties with established access to low-cost power, as operators across the digital infrastructure sector compete for sites capable of supporting large-scale compute deployments.

Founded in 2017 and an affiliate of asset management firm Stone Ridge Holdings Group, NYDIG has an existing Bitcoin mining business and offers crypto-focused financial services. The company previously acquired the flare gas cryptomining operations of Crusoe.