Urban Atlantic Joins Orlando-Area Leaders In Celebrating Groundbreaking of $35 Million Data Center and Headquarters in Historic Eatonville, Florida

Redevelopment by Hispanic-owned HostDime promises new jobs and economic growth on site that has been absent new development for more than 50 years.

Mid-City Community CDE, LLC, an affiliate of Urban Atlantic, joins Central Florida-area leaders in celebrating the groundbreaking for a new $35 million-dollar, 95,000-square-foot data center facility and global headquarters in historic Eatonville, Florida—the first African-American incorporated municipality in U.S. history. The expansion by minority-owned HostDime on the former Hungerford Preparatory School site along the I-4 corridor just north of downtown Orlando is slated to be completed in 2022. Mid-City Community CDE, which provides investments that catalyze economic growth in communities with a history of disinvestment, provided $6.5 million in New Market Tax Credit financing.

“This important new Mid-City CDE investment will create jobs and support minority business ownership in a key market that also hosts an iconic community. Supporting this major project is in keeping with our nearly two-decades-long track record of investing in minority-led businesses and urban and rural communities, across the country and in Puerto Rico, where access to capital has been elusive,” said Lois Fried, Managing Partner of Mid-City Community CDE.

The groundbreaking marks the first step in the redevelopment of nearly 100 vacant acres on a site (Wymore Road/Hungerford) that has not seen any new development in more than 50 years. The future interconnection hub fulfills a growing need for high speed 5G connectivity, fiber networks and public cloud storage throughout the Southeastern United States and South America. On completion, the five-acre complex will become the only enterprise Tier IV public data center in Central Florida and serve as a business continuity and disaster recovery opportunity for South Florida businesses.

To help bridge the technology gap in low-income communities, HostDime will provide free Wi-Fi as a direct benefit to Eatonville residents and an incentive for other technology-based companies to locate in Eatonville. HostDime’s new data center and corporate offices will include a conference center, training center, and hybrid indoor/outdoor event space capable of hosting national and global tech conferences for up to 350 people. A STEM lab and internet museum will be open for local school field trips.

Since its inception, Mid-City Community CDE has invested $309 million in New Market Tax Credits in 37 urban and rural projects. Significant projects have included The Oaks at Riverview, a mixed-income, mixed-use community in Tampa, a grocery store in Baltimore; a pharmaceutical plant in Manati, Puerto Rico; a mixed-use historic transformation of an abandoned 1 million square-foot Sears building into an urban village in Memphis, Tennessee; and a highly catalytic mixed-use community-driven development in the heart of rural Bennington, Vermont. The investments have generated more than 10,000 jobs and 1 million square feet of retail, office and manufacturing space, plus an additional $2.4 billion in public and private investment.

The partners of Urban Atlantic founded Mid-City Community CDE in 2002 to advance its goal of strengthening communities through thoughtful investment. Mid-City Community CDE finances operating businesses and real estate projects, working closely with communities to discover and answer needs from neighborhood services to fresh food markets and other essential retail.

About Mid-City CDE

As a certified Community Development Entity (CDE), Mid-City works with underserved communities throughout the United States and Puerto Rico. With this allocation, it has received $344 million in New Markets Tax Credits (NMTC) and used them to fund 37 successful projects in both rural and urban locations. Visit www.midcitycommunitycde.com

About Urban Atlantic

Since its founding in 1998, Urban Atlantic has established a strong track record of successfully investing and developing in transformational, large-scale, urban communities. Urban Atlantic focuses on creating vibrant, mixed-use, mixed-income, TOD neighborhoods. Headquartered in the Washington metro area for 20 years, the firm’s portfolio includes over $2 billion in completed real estate developments, creating nearly 9,000 residential units and 1 million square feet of commercial space. Urban Atlantic’s third-party investments have leveraged an additional $2 billion in real estate developments and operating businesses in emerging markets. Visit www.urban-atlantic.com for more information.

About HostDime

HostDime.com, Inc. is a global data center infrastructure provider offering an array of cloud products from bare metal servers to colocation services that cater to a range of clients, from entry to enterprise-level operations. Since 2003, HostDime has built data centers with humble beginnings in Florida. HostDime designed purpose-built and privately-owned data centers in Florida, USA as well as Mexico, Colombia and Brazil, and operates data centers in partner facilities in Hong Kong, India, and the United Kingdom.

Red ThinkingMay 26, 2021