Five deals closed or cleared this week, in five different states, and not one of them was really about money. Capital is everywhere right now. What these sponsors actually bought was a way around the grid interconnect queue and the zoning counter — the two things capital can't conjure. A Dallas operator paid $29 million for printer-era raised floor in Lexington because it came with a substation and a clean zoning letter. A Utah county green-lit a gigawatt and a half of gas behind the meter rather than make the developer wait in line. Niagara Falls settled a five-year land fight. And Amazon's name let Cipher price 70 megawatts of West Texas debt at six percent flat. The cheap input in 2026 isn't the building or the GPUs. It's having already solved power and permitting.

So this week reads as a single trade run five ways: buy the brownfield, build your own generation, settle the lawsuit, or borrow against an investment-grade offtake. Each one is a different door around the same wall.

$29 Million for 81,000 Square Feet of Printer-Era Raised Floor — Because It Came With a Substation and a Zoning Letter

DartPoints, the Dallas-based colo and interconnection operator, closed its purchase of the former Lexmark campus at 745 West New Circle Road in Lexington for $29 million, with the deal brokered by Lexington's Haymaker Company about six and a half months after the site hit the market. On paper it's a 343,000-square-foot building on 29.5 acres with roughly 81,000 square feet of existing raised-floor data center space. What DartPoints actually bought is the on-site substation and the as-of-right data-center zoning — two line items that would each cost years on a greenfield site, already done.

The density math tells the rest of the story. DartPoints is talking 20 to 30 MW of initial capacity into that 81 ksf of legacy floor, which pencils to roughly 0.3 kW/sf — a printer-cartridge company's idea of dense, not an AI tenant's. That's the point: the raised floor is the cheap part. The buyer is paying for the power interconnect and the entitlement, then re-fitting toward a 70 MW ceiling on its own clock. Lexington's mayor said no city incentives are coming, which is the brownfield trade in miniature: you skip the permit fight, you forfeit the goodwill.

Deal specs. Sponsor: DartPoints · Site: 745 W. New Circle Rd, within Lexington-Fayette city limits (~3 mi NW of downtown) · Footprint: 343 ksf building / 29.5 acres, ~81 ksf existing raised floor · Load: 20–30 MW initial, ~70 MW long-term (~0.3 kW/sf on the legacy floor at 25 MW) · Lease: fee-simple acquisition, brownfield redevelopment, as-of-right zoning, on-site substation; no tenant signed · Deal value: $29M, closed May 2026 · Source: PR Newswire.

Cerebras Takes All 40 MW in Columbiana, and Digi Power X Pre-Buys the GPUs to Fill It

Digi Power X committed $35 million to NVIDIA's Vera Rubin rack-scale systems on June 3, the demand-side bookend to the 40 MW campus it's building in Columbiana, Alabama — about 30 miles southeast of Birmingham in Shelby County — under a roughly $1.1 billion colocation master services agreement with Cerebras Systems signed in early May. It's a clean look at how a sub-50 MW Southeast secondary-market build gets financed and filled at the same time: anchor the whole campus to one colo tenant, then self-fund a GPU fleet for your own neocloud platform on top.

The campus comes in halves — 15 MW ready-for-service by December 15, 2026, the full 40 MW by the end of Q1 2027 — with the on-site substation and an Alabama Power delivery agreement already locked, which is why this one doesn't show up on anyone's queue-anxiety list. Digi says it had about $150 million in cash as of June 3 and has already put roughly $65 million into the Alabama site this year, all from its own balance sheet. The Cerebras agreement runs ten years with a seven-year extension option, which would carry total contract value toward $2.5 billion.

Deal specs. Sponsor: Digi Power X (NASDAQ: DGXX) · Tenant: Cerebras Systems (40 MW colo) + Digi's own NeoCloudz GaaS · Site: Columbiana, AL — ~30 mi SE of Birmingham, Shelby County · Footprint: n/d · Load: 40 MW (15 MW RFS Dec 2026; full 40 MW by Q1 2027 end) · Lease: 10-yr colo MSA + 7-yr extension option, escalator n/d, private AI tenant · Deal value: ~$1.1B MSA (up to ~$2.5B with extension); $35M GPU commitment · Source: Blockspace.

Cedar City Says Yes to 1.5 Gigawatts of Gas — Behind the Meter, Around the Queue

The Iron County, Utah planning commission unanimously approved a conditional-use permit for Pronghorn Development's Antelope Data Campus, roughly eight miles west of Cedar City — and the structure is the news, not the acreage. Rather than join an interconnection queue, Pronghorn intends to build up to 1.5 GW of on-site natural-gas generation behind the meter. The campus is entitled for as much as 6.75 million square feet across five buildings on 640 acres, phased over eight to ten years. No tenant has been named.

The permit also threaded a needle: the county had a 180-day moratorium on AI data centers in place, and staff ruled this application predated the pause, so it moved forward anyway. For developers chasing power-constrained Mountain-West geographies, the build-your-own-gas-plant model is the workaround to watch — it converts a multi-year grid wait into a self-funded generation project, with all the fuel-supply and emissions exposure that implies. Local coverage of the June approval notes the months of debate it took to get there.

Deal specs. Sponsor: Pronghorn Development LLC (Project Antelope) · Site: ~8 mi W of Cedar City, UT, Iron County (rural exurban) · Footprint: up to 6.75M sf at buildout, 5 buildings on 640 acres · Load: up to 1.5 GW on-site gas generation; campus IT load n/d · Lease: conditional-use permit approval, behind-the-meter self-generation; no lease or tenant disclosed · Deal value: n/d · Source: KSL.

A Five-Year Eminent-Domain Fight Ends in Niagara Falls, and 1.23 Million Square Feet Gets a Green Light

The Niagara Falls, New York city council voted June 3 to approve a settlement with Niagara Falls Redevelopment, ending a dispute that dated to 2021 and clearing the path for the $1.48 billion Niagara Digital Campus — a privately funded, downtown-infill build on 53 acres NFR already owns, developed with Toronto-based Urbacon. As a deal it matters less for raw megawatts, which weren't disclosed, than for what unlocked it: the binding event was a courthouse settlement, not a substation or a financing close. NFR donates a parcel to the city and the city pays NFR upward of $4 million for costs.

The plan is 1,232,715 square feet across eight two-story buildings and one single-story building, in the urban core rather than on the exurban edge. The lesson for the Northeast is that the gating item is increasingly entitlement and litigation risk, not power availability. New York also has a statewide posture tightening around data centers, which makes a settled, land-already-owned, privately financed campus a comparatively rare clean path. The June 3 vote came out of a contentious council meeting.

Deal specs. Sponsor: Niagara Falls Redevelopment + Urbacon (Toronto developer, US site) · Site: downtown Niagara Falls, NY (Falls St / John Daly Blvd), 53 acres, urban core · Footprint: 1,232.7 ksf — eight 2-story + one 1-story building · Load: n/d · Lease: litigation settlement / land deal (NFR donates parcel; city pays ~$4M costs); privately funded, no tenant · Deal value: ~$1.48B project cost · Source: WGRZ.

Amazon Backs 70 Megawatts in Andrews County, and Cipher Prices Debt at 6%. That's the Comp Now.

One deal this week broke the sub-75 MW frame on purpose, and it's here because it sets the spread the smaller stuff now prices against. Cipher Digital — the former bitcoin miner Cipher Mining — priced $810 million of 6.000% senior secured notes due 2031 on June 9, at 99.750 of par, through a single-asset SPV called Stingray Compute LLC. The notes fund the 70 IT MW Stingray facility in Andrews County, Texas, and the reason a former miner can print investment-grade-style paper is sitting in the lease: the site is fully pre-leased to Amazon Data Services on a 15-year triple-net, with annual escalators, an Amazon.com parent guarantee, and provisions for Amazon to cover construction overruns above a cap.

That is the whole point of including it. A 6.000% coupon on a single-asset data-center build is the number every uncontracted neocloud financing now gets measured against — and most of them won't get within 200 basis points of it, because they don't have an Amazon guarantee stapled to the offtake. The notes are expected to close June 15, with roughly $61.5 million of proceeds reimbursing prior equity. Cipher's pricing release has the structure; DCD has the AWS relationship.

Deal specs. Sponsor: Cipher Digital (NASDAQ: CIFR) via Stingray Compute LLC · Tenant: Amazon Data Services (parent guarantee from Amazon.com) · Site: Andrews County, TX (~within Andrews city orbit, West Texas) · Footprint: n/d · Load: 70 IT MW · Lease: 15-yr triple-net, annual escalator, overrun-cap provision, investment-grade tenant · Financing: $810M 6.000% senior secured notes due 2031 at 99.750, close expected June 15 · Source: GlobeNewswire.

What to Watch Next Week

Cipher / Stingray notes close. The $810M 6.000% notes are expected to settle June 15. Watch the final book and whether the Amazon-anchored print actually tightens — or just exposes — comps for uncontracted neocloud paper.

Lexington, KY planning commission. Public input on a new data-center zoning amendment is set for June 11, which bears directly on whether DartPoints can scale the Lexmark site toward its 70 MW ceiling without a fight.

Fayetteville, AR council. An ordinance moving data centers from permitted to conditional use is on the agenda, with a possible vote as soon as June 16 and an emergency clause that would make it immediate. A bellwether for as-of-right erosion in mid-size metros.

Clay County, FL moratorium. A final hearing on a one-year permitting pause in unincorporated county lands around June 23 — another data point in the local entitlement squeeze.

Illinois incentive pause. The state's halt on new Data Center Investment Program agreements takes effect July 1. Expect a few deals racing to grandfather in before the window shuts; existing agreements are honored.

Disclaimer: Edge Cases is Barrio Energy's deal-flow product. Nothing here is investment advice, a recommendation to transact, or a substitute for your own diligence. Specs are sourced from public filings, press, and reporting; verify before you wire anything.