ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — It was a historical day Wednesday for one of Central Florida’s most historic towns as HostDime broke ground on its new data center in Eatonville.

What You Need To Know

  • HostDime provides managed cloud-hosting services

  • The company says construction on the data center should be done by 2022

  • The pandemic delayed the project, says the company

For the town of Eatonville, it means a bright future is ahead. 

“To be able to look off of I-4 and see this big beautiful glass building, then someone says ‘right there is the historic town of Eatonville,’” said Mayor of Eatonville Eddie Cole. 

That glass building Eatonville will be HostDime’s new 95,000-square foot data center, which will be built on land in Eatonville that until now, had not been developed for almost a century. 

“I think this Hungerford development hasn’t seen any development in over 100 years, but that changes today!” said CEO and Founder of Data Hosting company HostDime Manny Vivar at the groundbreaking ceremony Wednesday.

HostDime provides managed cloud-hosting services and offers web tools.

The pandemic delayed the project, which was originally supposed to have been completed around this time. 

“You know construction costs went up high, you know which created an over-budget project,” Vivar said. 

But he did not give up.

“Extremely happy that we’re finally delivering on a vision we manifested a long time ago,” he said. 

Acres of land will now be added to Eatonville’s tax base, giving the city a lot more capital to work with and improve the town with. 

And the company has committed to providing free wifi to Eatonville's residents. 

And the data center brings the promise of even more development to come.

“This is about to change their whole landscape. I'd be shocked if in the next three years the rest of this development doesn’t happen, HostDime is the anchor tenant of this,” Vivar said. 

Vivar says he is proud to invest in Eatonville. 

Much like this data center, Eatonville was built on dirt and a dream.

A dream that black men and women could live free and govern themselves, which has given Vivar and many others an example to follow. 

“You combine them and great things are gonna happen,” Vivar said. 

HostDime says construction on the data center should be complete by September 2022.