Digital Realty has appealed against a 50-story residential tower development by Mitsui Fudosan Americas (MFA) in Los Angeles, California, reports The Real Deal (TRD).

Digital Realty has a data center project adjacent to the "Park Terrace" tower, and argues that the MFA building violates design guidelines, does not consider the impact it will have on the two neighboring buildings which are both eligible for California's Register of Historical Resources, and does not appropriately assess the potential impact to the environment.

Park Terrace is located at 8th Grand Avenue and Hope Street. Plans for the tower development began in 2017, with Mitsui Fudosan intending to break ground in 2024. The tower is only 40 feet from Digital Realty's project, a 13-story data center at 737 South Grand Avenue with around 486,000 square feet (45,150 sqm) of floor area. It is unclear whether the MFA development will impact Digital Realty's planned data center.

The data center giant is not alone in its appeal. Joined by the Coalition for Responsible Equitable Economic Development (CREED) Los Angeles, a group associated with trade unions, which argues that Park Terrace violates zoning regulations.

Digital Realty and CREED previously lodged appeals against the tower in July 2023, which were rejected. The new appeals have been placed on the agenda for the planning commission to discuss.

Daniel Freedman, a land use attorney and partner at Jeffer Mangels Butler & Mitchell in LA said to TRD: "Typically, these appeals are brought against projects to either delay the development, extract conditions or try to force the developer to modify some aspect of the project itself. On rare occasions, it’s a shake-down. It’s an attempt to extract a financial compensation in exchange for dismissing or abandoning an appeal that would otherwise take months or years to process.”

DCD has contacted Digital Realty for comment.

In addition to the close proximity to Digital Realty's planned LA data center, Park Terrace is also near to another of the company's facilities: LAX10, at 600 W 7th Street. Dating from 1914, the LAX10 building now holds a 27MW data center and is a major carrier hotel in the area.

Digital Realty has another LA-based data center known as LAX12. This facility is located at 2260 East El Segundo Boulevard and offers 18MW of IT capacity.