The UK seaside town of Blackpool is offering £300m ($393m) to a data center provider after approving a project earlier this month.

Following the Blackpool Council’s decision to grant planning permission for the project, the Council has issued a tender notice sourcing a third-party provider to “invest, develop, and operate a 6MVA exemplar data center.”

The provider will also be responsible for integrating the facility’s waste heat with Silicon Sands, a flagship digital infrastructure project at the Blackpool Airport Enterprise Zone announced back in May 2024.

The zone was home to an airport before being demolished in 2023, and the data center is set to be built on the site of the former airport fire station.

Previous planning proceedings show that the data center will be powered by renewable energy and utilize immersion cooling.

The contract will last three years from June 2026 onwards, and the council estimates that the award decision will happen in late May of next year.

According to a release from the council, planning permission is set to be submitted before Christmas following “significant interest” from private sector investors.

Cllr Mark Smith, Blackpool Council’s cabinet member for economy and built environment, said: “Silicon Sands is a transformational opportunity for Blackpool. It can create thousands of well-paid jobs, attract investment, and put us at the forefront of sustainable digital development. That vision is proven by the significant interest we have had from the private sector already.”

He continued: “Silicon Sands is about so much more than just data centers, though. We are carefully managing the programme so that we can create data centres which are carbon-friendly, and can even supply waste heat back to local communities.

Blackpool is not a big data center market, though an 80MW facility was proposed for Peel Park in the town in October 2024. The Silicon Sands site benefits from being close to a cable landing station for the Celtix-Connect2 subsea cable, which links Europe and the US.

This project is part of the Council’s bid for AI Growth Zone status, which is a governmental designation that would give future data center projects faster planning permission and access to power.

Last week marked the announcement of the UK’s fourth Growth Zone in South Wales, with the other three located in North Wales, Oxfordshire, and North Tyneside.