RICHMOND, VA. — Newmark has arranged $600 million in construction financing for a data center project in Richmond. The borrower and developer is a partnership between local developer PowerHouse Data Centers, New York City-based Blue Owl Real Estate and Chirisa, a firm that invests in digital and telecommunications infrastructure and real estate.
The square footage of the development was not announced, but the facility will have a critical capacity of 50 megawatts (MWs).According to recent data, PowerHouse is developing its hyperscale data centers at a ratio of 0.2 MW per square foot, giving the Richmond project an estimated square footage of 250,000 square feet of critical data center space.
The project will be a build-to-suit for CoreWeave, a New Jersey-based company that provides cloud-based graphics processing infrastructure. Construction began earlier this year, and operations are expected to begin sometime in 2025.
A syndicate of lenders led by European giant Societè Generale provided the debt, which was arranged by Newmark’s Jordan Roeschlaub, Jonathan Firestone, Clint Frease, Nick Scribani, Ben Kroll, John Caraviello and Brent Mayo.
“This transaction reflects the continued appetite for innovative, large-scale digital infrastructure solutions in key markets,” says Roeschlaub.
With more than 30 million square feet of physical product and an aggregate capacity of 3,400 MWs, Northern Virginia is the country’s largest data center market, according to Newmark’s research. The region’s data center market currently has a vacancy rate of just 0.2 percent.
The largest private user in the region is Amazon Web Services, which last year announced a $35 billion investment to establish more Northern Virginia data center campuses by 2040.
— Taylor Williams