US operator Digital Realty has acquired a 1920s office building in Charlotte, North Carolina, and plans to demolish it for a data center development adjacent to its existing Charlotte facility.

Shamrock Management Corp. sold the Court Arcade building at 725 E. Trade St. to Digital Realty for $9.5 million earlier this year.

In its Q1 2025 results, Digital said it acquired two parcels adjacent to its existing Charlotte facility for approximately $16 million.

Digital Realty affiliate Digital Trade Street 2 plans to build a four-story, 12MW data center on the site. Timelines for development haven’t been shared.

“Due to ongoing demand for connectivity and colocation data center capacity by the metro’s strong local economy and rapid digital transformation, we are pursuing expansion to better support both new and existing customers,” Digital Realty told the Charlotte Observer.

Built in the 1920s, Court Arcade is a two-story, 18,575-square-foot (1,726 sqm) office building in uptown's First Ward. Built as an office building for attorneys who had to visit the Mecklenburg County Courthouse nearby, the building is still home to several law firms and is also the headquarters for the Mecklenburg County Democratic Party. Shamrock had owned Court Arcade since March 1997, when it acquired the building for just over $1 million.

Digital Realty operates a single data center site across three buildings in Charlotte already. The company owns 731 E. Trade St., 113 North Myers St., and 125 North Myers St., on the same block as the Court Arcade building, which it operates together at its CLT10 facility. It purchased the three parcels in 2005 for about $17.3 million. CLT10 offers 29,200 sq ft (2,713 sqm) of colocation space and 2MW of capacity.

Cogent also has a property nearby at 701 E Trade Street.

As well as expanding its existing site in Charlotte, Digital Realty is developing a new campus in the area. The company was granted approval this year to build a 400MW, 3 million sq ft campus (278,709 sqm) on 156 acres at 12899 Moore’s Chapel Road.