Digital Realty has been granted permission to build its sixth data center in Marseille, France.

The colo giant has received the green light to convert a 26,000 sqm (279,861 sq ft) warehouse in Bouc-Bel-Air, a town just north of Marseille, into a data center.

Plans for the data center were first announced in 2023, when Digital Realty said the site would offer 50MW capacity. The company plans to spend €700 million ($811m) converting the building so that it can accommodate seven data halls.

With server racks at the data center set to require 120kW each, presumably to host AI workloads, Digital Realty plans to install a new high-voltage power supply. This will run from power company RTE’s Realtor substation in Cabriès, and supply 225,000 volts to a substation at the data center.

Digital Realty hopes to begin construction at the data center this year, with a view to servers coming online in 2028.

The company, then known as Interxion, arrived in Marseille in 2014 by taking over a data center from SFR. That site, since renamed MRS1, is located close to the port.

It now operates a number of other data centers in Marseille, with MRS2, 3, and 4 all within 500m of the new site. MRS3, opened in 2020, is located in a former WWII submarine base. MRS4, located nearby, launched in late 2022. The three facilities all utilize river cooling.

MSR5, its newest data center in France’s second city, is located at the site of a former sugar factory and is due to come online this year.

Digital Realty said last year it intends to spend an additional $5.5 billion on new data centers in Paris and Marseille, making the commitment at an international AI summit hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron.