A storage facility on Wade Hampton Boulevard in Taylors could soon house a small-scale artificial intelligence computing facility, with Greenville County Council set to take up the proposal on second reading next Tuesday, Nov. 17. The project would convert part of an existing building at the Prime Storage site — sandwiched between a Texas Roadhouse and a residential street — into what developers are calling an inference point, rather than demolishing anything or breaking ground on new construction.
The application was filed by Steven Pearce of McGuireWoods Consulting on behalf of Robert Moser of Prime Storage, according to WYFF4. Bob Moser, founder and CEO of Prime Group Holdings, has described the concept to county officials as a low-latency computing node built inside an existing storage property rather than a conventional data center, as reported by citizenportal.ai. The estimated project cost is $100 million, per the application cited by WYFF4.
Moser has said the facility would draw roughly 5 megawatts of power, according to citizenportal.ai's coverage of the proposal. He also told county officials the site would not connect to municipal water or sewer service, instead relying on trucked recycled cooling water running in a closed loop, and emphasized that all equipment would remain indoors.
What Exactly Is an Inference Point?
The term comes from Edge Inference, LLC, a Saratoga Springs, New York-based company that holds the trademark on the inference point concept and has developed several similar projects elsewhere in the country, according to the application reviewed by WYFF4. Per the company's own website, an inference point is meant to function as small local infrastructure tucked inside an existing building, delivering AI-generated answers to nearby residents, hospitals, schools and businesses almost instantly because the data processing happens close to home rather than at a distant server farm.
The company's website also describes the machines as quiet and states they use no city water, framing the facility as a tenant focused on serving a local community rather than storing data for customers around the world. The applicant has made a similar case directly to county officials, describing the Taylors proposal as a small, specialized computing site meant to serve local hospitals and other low-latency applications rather than operate as a hyperscale data center, per citizenportal.ai.
Committee Approval and Council Questions
Greenville County's Planning & Development Committee voted to approve the rezoning request, identified as CZ-2026-055, which would reclassify the 3150 Wade Hampton Boulevard property to S-1 for the proposed inference facility, citizenportal.ai reported. During that process, councilors pressed the applicant on power usage, noise levels and cooling safeguards before the committee's vote.
The full Greenville Planning Commission approved the project in October, but final sign-off rests with County Council, which is slated to weigh the matter on second reading Nov. 17, according to WYFF4. Council must give its approval before the project can move forward.
How Loud Could It Get?
Any noise generated at the site would be subject to Greenville County's existing ordinance, which caps sound at 70 decibels between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. and 60 decibels overnight, measured beyond the property line of anyone who files a complaint, according to the Greenville County Sheriff's Office. That same ordinance carves out an exception for lawfully established businesses and industries, though it does not apply to businesses where on-site alcohol consumption occurs or is permitted.
Part of a Broader Upstate Build-Out
The Taylors proposal lands amid a wave of data-related development across the Upstate. WYFF4 also points to two far larger proposed data centers elsewhere in the region: one on Tyger River Industrial Drive in Spartanburg that would use up to 65 megawatts, and another at the former R.R. Donnelly industrial property that would draw around 65 megawatts — both dwarfing the 5 megawatts described for the Taylors site.
Data Center Map estimates South Carolina already hosts 48 data centers spread across 12 markets, including Greenville, Spartanburg, Anderson, Seneca and Gaffney, according to the Upstate Business Journal. Nationally, more than 3,000 data centers are estimated to be operating in the United States, with over 1,500 more under development, and the U.S. accounted for 45% of global data center electricity consumption in 2024, the outlet reported.
Nearby, DartPoints is expanding its Greenville County operations with an 88,000-square-foot addition that will boost its total capacity from 2.5 megawatts to 12.5 megawatts and create 10 high-tech jobs, according to the South Carolina Department of Commerce. Construction on that project is already underway, with operations expected to begin in July 2027. Farther south, NorthMark Strategies, operating through Valara Holdings, is building a $2.8 billion high-performance computing data center at the former Kohler manufacturing plant southeast of Spartanburg, a project announced in April 2025 and detailed by the Upstate Business Journal.
