IRVING, TEXAS — Lone Star PACE has provided an $11.6 million C-PACE (Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy) loan for a data center conversion project in Irving. The project centers on the conversion of the vacant, 113,406-square-foot industrial flex building at 6001 Campus Circle Drive W, which was built on 4.7 acres in 1981, into Vesgro Data Center, a colocation facility with a 45,000-square-foot data hall and 3.0 megawatts of power capacity. The borrower is local data center developer Infrascale Systems. Construction is underway and expected to be complete in September.
EFFINGHAM COUNTY, GA. — OpenAI, an artificial intelligence (AI) research and deployment company best known for ChatGPT, has announced plans for a new data center campus in Effingham County, approximately 30 miles northwest of Savannah. Dubbed Project Camellia, the data center campus will cost at least $20 billion to develop in order for OpenAI to receive incentives, according to multiple news outlets. Bloomberg reports that the San Francisco-based company plans to spend as much as $30 billion on the project. The site is located within Savannah Gateway Industrial Hub (SGIH), a master-planned industrial park by Broe Real Estate Group and OmniTRAX spanning 2,700 acres. SGIH is served by both CSX and Norfolk Southern rail lines. OpenAI has entered into a 25-year agreement with utilities provider Georgia Power Co., which will supply 3.2 gigawatts of power to the project. According to the two companies, OpenAI will pay all infrastructure and electric-service costs for the data center campus. Additionally, OpenAI has pledged to provide $80 million in community benefits over the life of the project, as well as $71 million in Codex credits for eligible Georgia students. (Codex is OpenAI’s agentic coding tool that assists in building software and technical projects.) OpenAI also reports …
Digital Realty Agrees to Buy Blackstone’s Stake in Northern Virginia Data Center Portfolio for $3.5B
MANASSAS AND STERLING, VA. — Data center firm Digital Realty has agreed to purchase a $3.5 billion equity stake in three data centers located in the Northern Virginia cities of Sterling and Manassas from Blackstone-affiliated funds. The portfolio maintains a gross value of $7.8 billion, reflecting an expected initial stabilized capitalization rate of over 6.5 percent. The portfolio is comprised of three data centers — two in Manassas, one in Sterling — which each contain 96 megawatts of IT capacity. Digital Realty will purchase Blackstone’s 80 percent interest in the Manassas properties and 50 percent interest in the Sterling facility, including assumed debt and remaining capital expenditures to complete the ongoing development. Two of the data centers are expected to stabilize in the first half of 2027 while the third is anticipated to stabilize in 2028. The data centers are all fully leased for 15 years to investment-grade hyperscale customers, and rent will escalate annually by 3.6 percent. The transaction will see Digital Realty pay Blackstone $1.2 billion in cash as well as $2.3 billion in Digital Realty shares for a blended 64 percent equity interest in the properties. Digital Realty was an original partner in the $7 billion joint …
During his keynote address at InterFace I-85 Industrial Corridor, a two-day conference held May 19-20 at the Hilton Uptown Charlotte, Gregg Healy, executive vice president and head of industrial services at Savills, shared a quote from Charles Darwin to end his presentation. “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most adaptable to change.” Editor’s note: InterFace Conference Group, a division of France Media Inc., produces networking and educational conferences for commercial real estate executives. To sign up for email announcements about specific events, visit www.interfaceconferencegroup.com/subscribe. Industrial owners and developers have had to be adaptable given the haymakers issued by macroeconomic forces the past several years. During the COVID-19 pandemic, they rode the reinvigorated demand wave for e-commerce fulfillment with large-scale developments in key transportation corridors. In the following years, they scaled down their pipelines to focus on smaller, more targeted requirements as construction and capital costs rose significantly. And since Liberation Day, when the Trump administration declared a sweeping package of tariffs for foreign trade partners and specific commodities in April 2025, industrial developers have been building and leasing facilities for domestic and global manufacturers that were nearshoring their investments. Today, owners and …
GAINESVILLE, VA. — Newmark has arranged $975 million in financing for Project Helios, a newly delivered data center development in Northern Virginia. According to national media reports, the data center project is situated within the Gainesville Data Center campus in Prince William County. Jordan Roeschlaub, Christopher Kramer, Chris Lozinak, John Caraviello, Ryan Bub, Andrew Warin and Phil O’Bannon of Newmark arranged the financing through Blue Owl Capital on behalf of the borrower, a joint venture between Affinius Capital and Corscale Data Centers. Project Helios was fully leased at the time of financing to an unnamed cloud service provider under a long-term lease, according to Newmark.
CARLSTADT, N.J. — Cresa has negotiated a 249,640-square-foot data center lease in the Northern New Jersey community of Carlstadt. The tenant was not disclosed. The deal is for the entirety of the building at 600 Commerce Blvd., which was originally constructed in 2008 for a major banking institution. Michael Morris, Sumner Putnam, Kensey Gawne and Matt Deutsch of Cresa represented the landlord, local owner-operator Russo Development, in the lease negotiations.
By Rives Taylor, principal, global resilience research lead, Gensler Texas is experiencing rapid growth in data center development as part of a broader push to support artificial intelligence (AI) ventures that have transformed digital infrastructure into a magnet for capital. As noted in Gensler’s recent Design Forecast, these assets demand abundant land, power and connectivity, making the region a natural fit for long-term growth in digital and industrial real estate. However, these facilities also require reliable access to significant water resources to support cooling systems that are essential for maintaining uninterrupted operations. As development increases, so do the needs for resources, and Texas lacks a consistent policy requiring operators to report essential metrics such as water use, energy consumption or cooling loads. This lack of transparency limits the ability of policymakers, communities and design professionals to fully understand the environmental impact of one of the state’s fastest-growing industrial sectors. With rising pressure on water supplies and power systems, the need for clearer reporting standards and more forward‑looking design approaches is becoming increasingly urgent. A recent white paper by the Houston Area Research Center (HARC), found that “without modernized planning and policy updates, the state faces a collision between finite water …
TEMPLE, TEXAS — Rowan Digital Infrastructure, a Denver-based data center owner-operator backed by Blackstone (NYSE: BX), has received $3 billion in construction financing for a new, 700-acre hyperscale campus in the Central Texas city of Temple. The facility could account for the creation of approximately 600 construction jobs and up to 40 permanent jobs. Rowan broke ground on the first phase of the 300-megawatt (MW) project earlier this year and expects construction to last 12 to 18 months. The names of the debt providers were not disclosed, but local media outlet KDH News reports that the deal represents “the largest financing transaction in the company’s history” since its founding in late 2020. According to the Temple Daily Telegram, the campus is located at 1855 Bob White Road on the city’s east side and has a Phase I price tag of $700 million. The local publication also reports that the site will not require the development of additional electrical infrastructure and that the facility will have a water recirculation system that will reduce stress on the regional water supply. “Securing this financing is a major moment for Rowan and reflects a significant level of trust from the industry’s largest capital providers,” says …
NEW FLORENCE, MO. — Google has unveiled plans to invest $15 billion in building infrastructure in New Florence, about 75 miles west of St. Louis. The data center project will create thousands of construction jobs over the build period and hundreds of direct operational roles once the facility is up and running. Google is collaborating with the Construction Laborers and Contractors Joint Training Fund of Eastern Missouri to support the Laborers and Contractors Training Center. The project will enable the center to train more than 2,300 construction laborers, including 1,500 apprentices, over the next two years. In accordance with Missouri’s consumer protections in Senate Bill 4, which Gov. Kehoe signed into law in 2025, Google will continue to pay for 100 percent of the power the data center uses and any new infrastructure costs that are directly driven by its operations. To date, Google has contracted to bring more than one gigawatt of new generation capacity to Missouri, and through its partnership with Ameren, the company is supporting the development of more than 500 megawatts of additional capacity. To further address energy affordability, Google has also announced a $20 million Energy Impact Fund to support programs that drive down monthly …
AVONDALE, ARIZ. — Prime Data Centers, a Dallas-based developer and operator of hyperscale and purpose-built data centers, has broken ground on the first three facilities at PHX01, a five-building data center campus in Avondale. The 66.5-acre park sits roughly 19 miles west of Phoenix via I-10. Each data center at PHX01 will span 267,000 square feet and offer 48 megawatts (MW) of critical IT load capacity. The 1.3 million-square-foot campus will offer 240MW of total critical power upon completion. “Breaking ground on PHX01’s first three buildings is a defining moment for Prime’s partnership with Avondale and for the greater Phoenix region,” says Michael Wall, executive vice president of product delivery at Prime Data Centers. “This first phase represents the beginning of a long-term investment in Avondale, and the infrastructure we are putting in place today is built to scale alongside the demands of our customers for years to come.” An undisclosed hyperscale user has committed to leasing the first three buildings for which construction is underway at PHX01. Prime Data Centers is marketing Buildings 4 and 5 to single or multi-tenant hyperscale users. “This more than $3 billion investment by Prime with its customers investing an average 2X more represents a …
Newer Posts