Digital Realty’s Broken Promise: Charlotte’s Court Arcade, Demolished for a Data Center
In October 2025, Digital Realty filed a demolition permit for a century-old office building in uptown Charlotte, promising to preserve its historic facade. By July 2026, that promise was gone, and so was the building.
The 1920s Court Arcade Building
The Court Arcade was one of Charlotte’s earliest examples of mixed-use development, ground-floor retail with attorneys’ offices above.
It was designed by Architect William H. Peeps in the mid-1920s, opening between 1926 and 1929. The intention was to accommodate attorneys who needed to visit the Mecklenburg County Courthouse and other government buildings directly across East Trade Street.
Peeps also designed the nearby Latta Arcade in the same period; the Court Arcade’s Classical Revival style was deliberately more conservative, reflecting Charlotte’s architectural tastes shifting and echoing the nearby Charlotte City Hall and County Courthouse.
The building consists of two connected sections: a two-story front section facing East Trade Street, with the main entrance and storefronts, and a one-story rear section set at a slightly higher floor level to match the site’s slope.
The “Arcade” name comes from the covered indoor passage that runs the length of the building beneath a raised skylight.
The facade is faced in sandstone blocks, with a bottom row of more durable granite at ground level. Carved pilasters rise from the stone, separating the six bays of the facade and rising to a second-story frieze with a single recessed panel, each pilaster topped with a Corinthian capital.
An Agreement to Preserve the Court Arcade’s Facade, Broken
Digital Realty, one of the world’s largest owners and operators of data centers, purchased the Court Arcade building in 2025 for roughly $9.5 million, after acquiring three surrounding parcels back in 2005 for about $17.3 million.
The company already had a data center at 113 North Myers Street, adjacent to the Court Arcade site, which it planned to expand.
Digital Realty filed a demolition permit in October of 2025, but explicitly committed to preserve the Court Arcade’s facade, including its arched entryway and covered setback.
But by July 2026, the company filed a full demolition permit and a spokesperson said that “after careful study, our architects, engineers, and project team weren’t able to find a feasible way” to preserve the facade. Mecklenburg County approved the permit despite significant opposition by local historic preservation groups.
The historic building was demolished in one day within about a week of that permit approval.
Why Charlotte’s Data Center Moratorium Didn’t Save the Court Arcade
Another interesting wrinkle to the story is the fact that Charlotte actually had enacted a moratorium on new data center development and rezoning in June 2026.
But the moratorium did not apply to Digital Realty’s Court Arcade project, since it was an expansion of an already-existing, already-approved data center use rather than a new rezoning.
That meant Digital Realty could complete the demolition “by right,” regardless of the moratorium or any resident opposition.
This demolition was for a comparatively modest project, compared to a much larger project Digital Realty is working on near the Charlotte airport. It received approval in May 2026 for what will be one of the largest data centers in North Carolina at 3 million square feet across 156 acres, including an electrical substation built and owned by Duke Energy.
The current image of a data center in the popular consciousness is typically that type of huge campus built on rural farmland, but an NYU study in 2026 found that 97.5% of existing U.S. data centers actually sit within metro or urban areas. But the majority of new projects are indeed shifting to rural areas, particularly in the Midwest and South.
And a typical urban data center tends to be far smaller than the newest wave of rural hyperscale campuses, some of which now exceed 1,000 acres and span millions of square feet.
Sources
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission, “The Court Arcade”
WBTV, “Uptown Charlotte data center project includes demolishing historic building front”
Charlotte Stories, “Iconic Piece of Charlotte History About To Be Demolished For A New Data Center”
Yahoo News, “Historic Charlotte building demolished in a day, clears path for data center”
Pew Research Center, “Most new data centers in the U.S. are coming to rural areas”
Route Fifty, “Report finds most data centers are in urban, not rural, areas”
