Land and Expand: Virginia Data Centers

Land and Expand is a periodic feature at Data Center Frontier highlighting a sampling of the latest North American data center development news, including new sites, land acquisitions and campus expansions.

Today, we look at some new and notable developments from hyperscale and colocation data center companies about which we’ve been reading lately, specifically in the the Commonwealth of Virginia, home of world's perennially largest data center market, Data Center Alley in Ashburn.

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[Excerpt from Article]

PowerHouse Breaks Ground On Massive Data Center Campus In Spotsylvania County

As recorded by Datacenter Dynamics (DCD), PowerHouse Data Centers has just broken ground on a new, approximately 800 MW data center campus in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, with the site's first 300 MW substation currently under development and set to provide 150 MW  by October 2025.

Dubbed PowerHouse 95 (PH 95), the campus will have three 300 MW substations when completed, geared to serve the data-intensive needs of hyperscale users in northern Virginia, still the world's largest data center market by far.

PowerHouse announced on its LinkedIn page that the new campus construction was underway. Upon completion, the site's first substation will provide enough power to construct up to eight or more high-density data centers, stated the company.

PowerHouse 95 is expected to offer a competitive advantage by accelerating the operator’s ability to address customers' increasing data demands in the region, despite concerns over power constraints. The campus is located along the I-95 corridor, with two existing substations offering "imminent access to power," according to the company.

PowerHouse Data Centers was introduced in 2022 as the brand for the digital infrastructure business of American Real Estate Partners (AREP). PowerHouse partnered with investor Harrison Street, who at that time announced plans to invest $1 billion to build six data centers representing 2.1 million SF of space in Northern Virginia by 2026.  

On the Spotsylvania campus, parent investor Harrison Street and PowerHouse Data Centers said they'll have the flexibility to develop between four to eight powered shells and two additional substations, maximizing optionality for hyperscale tenants.

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PowerHouse has already made its impression felt in the state's Loudoun County.  The developer's seminal project was the imminent PowerHouse ABX-1 at Beaumeade, a 265,000 square foot (SF) data center in Ashburn.

Meanwhile, the company's well-publicized razing last year of the old AOL headquarters near Dulles Airport for hyperscale data center construction in a 1.2 million sq ft project was at the time only the latest symbolic expression of where PowerHouse is headed.

The following video illustrates the progress of construction at the PowerHouse 95 North site.

https://youtu.be/FgEFbQvTvrA

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