DoverDC files a second 200MW data center beside the South Morang substation

DoverDC has filed a second data center application in Melbourne's northern suburbs, this time a 200MW, three-storey building called SM1B on undeveloped land at 165 Williamsons Road in South Morang, Data Center Dynamics first reported.

Submitted through Dover1 SM2 Pty Ltd to the Victorian Department of Transport and Planning, the application puts about 1.8 hectares of an 8.7-hectare site beside both the South Morang Terminal Station and the South Morang Substation, according to the developer's website.

Less than a mile north, DoverDC's other project — a three-storey, 120MW data center planned for 525/535 McDonalds and 765 Plenty Roads — secured its planning permit in September 2024.

Construction on that scheme, SM1A, is expected to begin in late 2026 or early 2027, with the first phase potentially launching in 2028 or 2029, according to Data Center Dynamics.

Two applications within a mile of the same terminal station is a power-led move, and the right one in a market where interconnection has replaced land and capital as the constraint.

The South Morang substation anchors the new site; SM1B gives DoverDC a second claim on that node while SM1A proceeds. Consent and construction capacity are now the scarce power rights — and the consent half is where this project gets complicated.

The City of Whittlesea, which sits close to the proposed developments, this month called on federal and state governments to “establish a robust regulatory and planning framework for data center development,” amid growing concerns about potential impacts.

A petition to stop the McDonalds/Plenty Roads project, sponsored by Victorian Greens MLC Aiv Puglielli, has collected more than 4,600 signatures in the Victorian parliament. Last week the Greens put forward legislation for an immediate moratorium on new data centers; the bill was defeated in a vote.

The moratorium's defeat keeps the planning pathway open, but it does not clear it: the petition is organized opposition, and Whittlesea's public call for a state framework is a sign that future applications will face more scrutiny, not less.

For a developer hoping to start construction on SM1A in late 2026, the timeline risk has moved from the grid connection to the planning process.

DoverDC is not a conventional data center operator: its executive team also holds leadership positions at Legacy Project Management and LPM Land and at the architecture and design firm Ewert Leaf, and some members previously worked at Macquarie Group, according to Data Center Dynamics.

An ASX-listed real estate investment group owns a stake in both projects, per its most recent earnings presentation — a structure that reads like a property-led developer carrying planning risk with a listed capital holder behind it.

A hyperscaler-anchored development can command infrastructure pricing on a signed lease; this is a land-and-planning bet that needs a permit, a power deal, and a customer before it becomes digital infrastructure.

The REIT's stake suggests the capital is comfortable holding the land while the planning risk gets resolved — exactly the risk a private-infrastructure investor would want to price separately.

SM1A has its permit and a construction window; SM1B has an application and a substation. In a municipality already organizing against the first project, the second one has to clear the same political bar.