The Proposal at Grassmere Park

DC BLOX submitted permits to demolish existing structures at 648 Grassmere Park, regrade the land, and construct a 69,128 data center drawing 10 Megawatts of power.

DC BLOX is an Atlanta-based company that builds AI data centers and then waits for tenants to fill them, with no announced customers for the Nashville facility and no existing demand to meet. They are building out a field of dreams on a bet, with the expectation that Nashville's soil, water, power grid, community members, and wildlife will absorb the cost on their behalf.

But geotechnical documents submitted as part of that exact same permitting process describe something considerably larger:

Two data centers totaling 345,000 square feet using a total of 50 Megawatts of power, a 72,000 square-foot electrical substation, associated parking structures, a guard house, generator yards, and 12.4 acres of total ground disturbance.

These aren't our words: it's their own submitted plans.

WANT TO CANVASS YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD?

DOWNLOAD OUR FLYER IN YOUR LANGUAGE HERE:

Additional languages are going to be made available shortly! Thank you for your patience with us as we work hard to include all our neighbors in this fight. If you speak Kurdish, Arabic, or any one of the other many languages our neighbors speak and can offer translation services at no or low cost please email info@nonewdatacenters.com

The "Waterless" Lie: Swapping Water for Heavy Noise and Local Air Pollution:

To quiet public backlash, DC BLOX told the Nashville Scene that they plan to use "waterless" or "closed-loop" cooling systems. They want us to think this is environmentally friendly. But professional engineers who design these exact systems have stepped forward to blow the whistle on the trick they are playing.

"Waterless" cooling is a greenwashing illusion. It simply means they are using giant, commercial-scale air conditioners.

Because air-cooling is incredibly inefficient compared to liquid systems, it creates a massive, hidden toll on South Nashville:

Continuously Burning Fossil Fuels

Cooling these massive AI computer clusters with air alone requires an astronomical amount of electricity. To offset this grid strain, DC BLOX’s own plans show they are installing four massive 3.5 megawatt natural gas generator units. This means they will be running a literal fossil-fuel burning power plant on-site, continuously pumping CO2 and heavy air pollution directly into our neighborhood's air.

Deafening Outdoor Fan Equipment

Sucking in enough air to cool rows of supercomputers requires massive, building-sized exhaust fans and cooling yards running 24/7/365.

Zero Transparency

Despite these extreme noise and air pollution risks, DC BLOX has submitted zero cooling system disclosures and zero noise mitigation plans in their permit documents. They are hiding the details because they know we won't accept the noise.

If It's Unsafe for Wildlife, It's Unsafe for Our Neighbors

While the media has focused on the threat to the Zoo, the reality is that what is bad for the animals is bad for the residents who live right next door. Grassmere Park doesn't sit in an empty desert. It backs directly up to the neighborhoods of South Nashville, a vibrant, multi-ethnic home to a large, diverse resident base, including Tennessee's largest Hispanic, Kurdish, Arabic-speaking, and East African immigrant populations alongside historic African American and European-American communities.

Imagine what that means for the people who live, study, and sleep here:

For Our Wildlife (50 Yards Away)

Students trying to study, sleep, and live just a football field's distance from the site will experience a sound comparable to a hair dryer running in the next room, or a constant stream of heavy highway traffic, 24 hours a day.

For Our Neighbors (500 Yards Away)

If this constant, low-frequency hum is loud enough to disrupt animal breeding, it is loud enough to disrupt a child trying to sleep or a neighbor trying to enjoy their backyard. Sound does not respect fence lines. This industrial noise will hit the absolute maximum legal limit (65db) for daytime noise across adjacent properties, offering zero buffer.

For Our Waterways (0 Yards Away)

To handle the sinkhole-prone karst geology under the site, DC BLOX’s plans call for treating the soil with lime across the entire footprint to prevent the ground from absorbing stormwater. Silt-heavy, caustic, high-pH runoff from their three proposed outfalls will dump directly downstream, polluting the Zoo’s fragile, already impaired creek system and threatening local neighborhood waterways.

How to help with what happens next

Tuesday, June 16, 2026: The Metro Council Government Operations Committee reviews the emergency data center moratorium. How to help: Flood their email inboxes.

Thursday, June 18, 2026: The Nashville Metro Planning Commission holds a public hearing on Bill BL2026-1391 (restricting data center buffers). How to help: Show up in person. Two minutes on a microphone goes a long way.

Tuesday, July 7, 2026: Metro Council Meeting – The critical Second Reading of the Emergency Moratorium and the Zoning Bill. How to help: Help us fill the council gallery to show our support.

What Has Happend &

What's Next

How We Got Here

Late May 2026: Nashville Zoo leadership and local residents sound the alarm on DC BLOX's exploitation of our city's outdated zoning codes.

June 2, 2026: Council members Rollin Horton and Courtney Johnston step up to file emergency legislation to define, restrict, and buffer data centers.

June 5, 2026: Country music legend Brad Paisley posts a viral video calling the project an "absolute nightmare scenario," sending our petition skyrocketing past 300,000 signatures.

June 9, 2026: Nashville Metro Council votes a decisive 26 to 1 on the first reading of Council member Courtney Johnston's emergency countywide data center moratorium.

June 10, 2026: The Nashville Zoo files a formal zoning appeal to overturn DC BLOX's existing approved permits.

June 11, 2026: Over 235,000 people sign the Zoo's petition in under 24 hours (climbing toward 380,000+). Local engineers speak at the Metro Planning Commission public hearing, exposing DC BLOX's "waterless" cooling claims as an environmental shell-game that swaps water for massive air pollution and heavy noise.

Metro Permit Lookup:

Help Us Watch Them

We cannot let developers quietly push permits through before our city's representatives can vote to protect us. We need neighbors keeping watch.

How to Track Their Filings:

1. Go to the Metro Nashville ePermits Portal.

2. Look for active Grading (GR) or Building (CA) permits.

3. If you see a permit status change to "In Review" or "Under Review," it means they are trying to rush.

4. Contact your council member immediately.

Let your elected officials know what you support

Your voice matters. Let's make sure the people making these decisions hear us loud and clear.

Clicking the buttons below will launch an email draft in your preferred email provider to key decision-makers including District 26 Council member Courtney Johnston, At-Large Council Members, Mayor Freddie O'Connell, and Vice Mayor Angie Henderson.

Pre-written Subject Line:

Save the Nashville Zoo & Neighborhoods - Support BL2026-1391

Pre-written Message:

Dear District 26 Council member Johnston, Mayor O'Connell, and Metro Council Members,

I am writing to express my strong opposition to the proposed DC BLOX data center campus at 648 Grassmere Park.

Siting a massive 50-megawatt, 345,000-square-foot heavy industrial facility just 50 yards from the Nashville Zoo's endangered animal enclosures is an environmental and community failure. The developer's proposed "waterless" cooling design relies on heavy, air-polluting gas generators and massive cooling fans running 24/7, directly threatening the Zoo's clouded leopard conservation program with heavy noise.

Furthermore, this industrial noise and water runoff threat directly impacts the diverse residential neighborhoods surrounding Grassmere Park. What is unsafe for sensitive wildlife is fundamentally unsafe for our families and our children.

I urge you to support Council member Horton's Bill BL2026-1391 to establish mandatory half-mile buffer zones between industrial data centers and homes, schools, and zoos.

Sincerely,

[Your Name] [Your Address]

Power in numbers.

Strength in community.

Belief in your neighbors.