Data Center CEO Refuses $6M Loan from City
Some members of the crowd lined up to ask questions during the recent town hall on the DataOne project.
PHOTO: MICKEY BRANDT
In a surprising development, Charles-Antoine Beyney, founder and CEO of DataOne USA, said his company won’t take the $6,198,786 million loan offered by the City of Vineland to help with construction of the giga-scale AI data center on south Lincoln Avenue. It happened at a midweek town hall held at Landis Theater on January 21.
Vineland City Council had agonized about the decision to give final approval to grant the money to the controversial company, tabling it at an early December meeting, then passing it at the final meeting of 2025.
Activist members of the public spoke at those meetings and urged council not to authorize the loan.
Before it came before council, the Urban Enterprise Zone (UEZ) funding was evaluated and approved at several levels, following standard procedure for the federal loan program and making the council’s job essentially pro forma.
Beyney made his unexpected announcement while recently addressing a town hall crowd of several hundred supporters and opponents of the artificial intelligence data center being built next to Trout National golf course.
The CEO said his company is declining the money “because I listen to people (in the community)—that’s who I am.”
He went on to say his decision was “unfortunate, because the city would have received significant interest on the loan.”
A knowledgeable city official estimated the interest for the one-year term of the bridge financing at $350,000 to $375,000.
Proceeds from “revolving” UEZ loans are re-distributed to other new city businesses that apply and are approved.
Sources said at least some council members were generally surprised by Beyney’s decision, but didn’t blame him for it.
The four-hour town hall at the Landis Theater in Vineland offered a forum both for Beyney to discuss the facts about the project in a detailed presentation, as well as for supporters to reinforce his ideas. Much of the crowd, though, consisted of opponents of the project and about 60 of them took the microphone to question Beyney, sometimes pointedly. He answered each person, and the meeting was, for the most part, civil and informative.
The loan has the standard UEZ interest rate of about six percent.
