ASHBURN, VA. — H5 Data Centers has broken ground on a three-story, 255,000-square-foot data center in Ashburn, a city in Northern Virginia. The Denver-based developer has begun preleasing the property, which is set for delivery in the third quarter of 2024. The data center located on Beaumeade Circle will qualify for Virginia data center sales and use tax exemption, according to H5. Ashburn is known as the data center capital of the world and houses facilities leased to Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Meta, among others.
BRYAN, TEXAS — Aphorio Carter, a division of Tampa-based investment firm Carter Funds, has acquired a data center and office complex located in the Central Texas city of Bryan for $55 million. The complex consists of two data center buildings and one office building totaling 69,788 square feet. At the time of sale, the facility was fully leased to colocation services provider Fibertown, which recently entered into a 20-year net lease at the property. The seller was not disclosed.
CAMBRIDGE, MASS. — Locally based firm Nauset Construction is underway on the renovation of a 90,000-square-foot data center that is located across the Charles River from Boston in Cambridge. The project represents the third phase of capital improvements at the property at 300 Bent St. Upgrades will include the demolition and excavation of the existing lobby, the revamping of mechanical and utility systems and the addition of another 8,000 square feet of tenant space. Khalsa Design is the project architect. Construction is anticipated to be complete this fall. CEM Realty Trust owns the property.
FORT WORTH, TEXAS — Hilco Real Estate has brokered the bankruptcy sale of a 48,980-square-foot data center located along U.S. Highway 287 in Fort Worth. Built in 2018 as an industrial flex property and recently repositioned to support data center usage, the facility features 18- to 26-foot clear heights, 22 drive-in doors and office space. The site includes 6.5 acres for future expansion. The facility was leased to an undisclosed trucking company at the time of sale. The buyer and seller were not disclosed.
Data Center Developers Consider Unconventional Sites, Streamlining Strategies to Meet Immense Demand
Data center development is simultaneously growing by leaps and bounds as well as suffering from its own success. The easy-to-develop sites have been snapped up and demand for additional data and cloud services continues to grow, forcing developers to look beyond the obvious locations for sites. This can entail running into less-than-obvious delays in the development process. Data centers reliably store and transmit the deluge of information that makes modern life possible. The factors driving the need for data centers — enterprise demand for cloud services, dependence on 5G cell networks, artificial intelligence technology, edge computing capabilities, social media use and streaming needs — will continue to grow exponentially in the coming years. According to a September 2022 report by advisory company Arizton, approximately 2,825 megawatts of power capacity will be added to the data center market in the next five years. The same report forecasts the U.S. data center construction market will reach $25 billion by 2027, up from $20 billion in 2021. Data centers are utility-intensive property types, and the sites that can support their formidable power, communication and water needs often require high-level considerations right from the start. How can the development process for such projects be streamlined …
FOREST GROVE, ORE. — Crane Data Centers Inc. and Principal Asset Management plan to develop a data center campus in Forest Grove, a suburb of Portland. The campus will be situated near the Hillsboro data center ecosystem, which houses data centers for users including Meta, Twitter and Microsoft, among others. The estimated development cost for the project was not disclosed. “We’re honored to partner with Principal Real Estate Investors to develop a new data center campus in the Portland market,” says Matt Pfile, CEO of Crane. “This strategic partnership with Crane and data center investment in the Portland area is an exciting project for all parties involved and makes for an excellent addition to our current portfolio of data centers,” says Ben Wobschall, managing director of real estate at Principal Asset Management. The first phase of the project includes a data center spanning approximately 300,000 square feet on a 35-acre site. The facility will have an initial capacity of 50 megawatts (MW) with plans to expand to over 100 MW, according to the developers. The two-story property will have 30-foot clear heights with flooring that can support 400 pounds per square foot, according to Crane. The construction timeline for Phase …
CHICAGO — Metro Edge Development Partners has unveiled plans to build a $257 million data center within the Illinois Medical District (IMD) in Chicago. Construction is scheduled to begin in 2023 and be completed in 2024. Metro Edge secured a 75-year ground lease on a nearly two-acre parcel owned by IMD. The data center will rise five stories and span 184,720 square feet. The facility is 50 percent preleased. Corgan is the project architect. Clune Construction is overseeing all construction in partnership with Power Construction and Ujamaa Construction. T5 Data Centers is the project manager.
DORAL, FLA. — JLL has arranged the $34 million sale-leaseback of a 103,000-square-foot data center located at 2100 N.W. 84th Ave. in Doral, a suburb of Miami. Carl Beardsley, Jake Wagner, Josh Katlin, Luis Castillo and Manny de Zárraga of JLL represented the undisclosed seller, which will lease a portion of the space. The unnamed buyer will occupy the remaining space. Situated within America’s Gateway business park in Miami’s Airport industrial submarket, the freestanding facility features several fiber providers, a covered loading dock and 4,092 square feet of mezzanine space. The seller recently invested “significant capital” to update the property, according to JLL.
FAYETTEVILLE, GA. — Quality Technology Services (QTS), a data center owner and operator, has acquired 615 acres in Fayetteville, about 25 miles south of Atlanta. The Overland Park, Kan.-based firm plans to develop the world’s largest multi-data center campus on the site, according to CBRE. The square footage and construction timeline for the campus were not released. Tim Huffman and Mike Lash of CBRE represented the seller, the Fayette County Development Authority, in the deal. The duo also procured QTS, which acquired the assemblage for $153.8 million, or approximately $250,000 per acre. Atlanta’s data center market has seen strong demand as the market recorded a vacancy rate of 3.6 percent as of second-quarter 2022, according to CBRE research. The market is currently home to 249.5 megawatts (MW) of data center capacity, a 71.7-MW increase from the first half of 2021.
ALPHARETTA, GA. — Lincoln Rackhouse, the data center division of Lincoln Property Co., and Principal Real Estate Investors, the real estate investment arm for Principal Global Investors, have partnered to purchase a 185,000-square-foot data center. Originally built and occupied by cell phone giant Blackberry in 2009, the data center sits on a 38-acre site at 4905 N. Point Parkway in Alpharetta, less than two miles from the Avalon mixed-use development and about 25 miles north of Atlanta. The seller and sales price were not disclosed. The data center’s current capacity is 7 megawatts (MW) but is expandable up to 13 MW, and the site can accommodate a new ground-up data center that can support 30 MW of capacity. St. Louis-based Ascent will continue to provide facilities management, engineering and construction services to the site. Digital Crossroad and CBRE’s Atlanta-based data center solutions team will provide marketing and leasing services for the new ownership.