HAMLET — It appears another company is eyeing Richmond County for a data center.
County GIS records show a company named Digital Hamlet LP purchased 403.82 acres of land on County Home Road, north of Hamlet, on July 23.
A portion of the property is across the road from the former Ninth Grade Academy, which will serve as a stand-in for L.J. Bell Elementary while a new school is built. Another section of the property is on the east side of E.V. Hogan Drive.
Records show the paid excise tax was $20,167. According to state statute, the excise tax rate is “is one dollar ($1.00) on each five hundred dollars ($500.00) or fractional part thereof of the consideration or value of the interest conveyed.”
Records with the N.C. Secretary of State’s Office show Digital Hamlet LP was formed Feb. 11, 2026 and is incorporated in Delaware.
The registered agent is listed as Corporation Service Company, which bills itself as “the world's leading provider of business administration and compliance solutions.”
State records show the mailing address and principal office address as 2323 Bryan St. Suite 1800 in Dallas, Texas, which coincides with Digital Realty. That company boasts “hundreds of data centers worldwide,” including in Charlotte.
"We are focused on delivering on our purpose to bring companies, technologies and data together, in bold new ways, to power the innovation determining our future," reads Digital Realty's "About Us" page.
According to the EPA, more than 50 of Digital Realty's data centers are Energy Star certified.
The registered office and mailing addresses are on Glenwood Avenue in Raleigh. A search shows that address is the same for both Raleigh CSC Process Service —”registered directly with Corporation Service Company” — and the law firm of Hatch, Little & Bunn, LLP.
The grantor on the deed is listed as ASF Carolina Holdings I, LLC. The registered agent is listed as Brian Rubins, who is a founding member of Charlotte-based Terra Vista Consulting.
The registered office and mailing addresses trace back to Terra Vista, while the listed mailing and principal office addresses are that of Fountains Land, a land marketing company out of Georgia.
Fountains Land lists multiple tracts that have been recently sold, mostly in Vermont and Alabama, with others in New York, New Hampshire, Georgia and Texas. However, the Richmond County property is not listed.
It appears county officials were unaware of the land sale.
"In respect to a recent purcahse of land in Richmond County by Digital Realty, we recently became aware of the sale through our tax office's appraisal unit after the sale was recorded," Economic Developer Martie Butler told the RO on July 29. "This was a sale between two private entities and was not facilitated by county staff."
The Amazon Web Services data center campus is under construction at the Energy Way Industrial Park south of Hamlet.
RO file photo
In 2025, the county announced that Amazon would be constructing a $10 billion mulit-building data center complex in the Energy Way Industrial Park, south of Hamlet.
The N.C. Department of Environmental Quality is holding a public hearing for air quality permits related to generators for the site at 6 p.m. Thursday, July 30 at the old Richmond County Courthouse in downtown Rockingham.
A protest against the data center is scheduled to begin at 5 p.m. outside the courthouse.
A petition was started Feb. 4 on Change.org to stop the data center, which broke ground in October 2025 and is already under construction. It currently has 959 signatures.
Another petition was started on MoveOn.org, but there appears to be no date. A search shows multiple petitions against data centers across the country.
Many of those opposing data centers are concerned about rising electric bills and water usage.
In March, Amazon and other tech companies signed a pledge to not affect energy rates.
On July 23, Duke Energy joined the Ratepayer Protection Pledge, according to the state Attorney General’s office.
“Duke just promised the federal government that it won’t shift the cost of data centers onto families,” Attorney General Jeff Jackson said in a press release. “We agree, but a promise in Washington doesn’t lower a power bill in North Carolina. We’re calling on Duke to make that same promise to the Utilities Commission, in writing, where it can be enforced.”
Gov. Josh Stein, who came to Richmond County to welcome Amazon, joined Jackson in “challenging Duke to put its money where its mouth is and commit legally – not just verbally.”
"The North Carolina Utilities Commission and Duke Energy must create a legally binding large load tariff to charge data centers their full freight, and they must establish a program that allows data centers to directly select and pay for their generation,” the governor said in a statement. “North Carolinians are struggling to make ends meet, and data centers must pay their own way to protect families from rising electricity costs.”
A recent study from Charles River Associates found that data centers “have generally not caused retail rate increases,” except for one region.
“Where rates have gone up, the increases were driven by specific, localized factors that increased utilities’ operating costs, causing rates to rise,” reads the executive summary. “Those factors differed by location and are caused by changes in markets, policies, and other circumstances beyond utilities’ control. In general, the utilities have managed controllable costs effectively.”
As for water usage, Amazon said that water is used for cooling for only about 10% of the year, relying on “‘free air cooling,’ pulling in outside air, running it past servers to absorb the heat, then pumping it back outside” for the remaining 90% of the year.
“In Richmond County specifically, our project will draw from existing surplus capacity in the County’s water system — generating new revenue for the County’s water and sewer operations at no additional cost or investment to the County or its ratepayers,” according to an Amazon spokesperson.
According to datacenter.com, there are 96 data centers in North Carolina. Although the first building is still under construction, Amazon’s Richmond County data center is listed.
Note: This article was updated to correct a spelling error: 7:44 pm 7/29/26
