Another $1b data center coming to Northern Virginia

Santa Clara, Calif.-based Vantage Data Centers has acquired 42 acres in Ashburn, Va., known as “Data Center Alley,” to build a $1 billion data center campus.

The purchase price was not disclosed.

The 108-megawatt data center will comprise five buildings, totaling more than 1 million square feet.

This will be the company’s third data center location and its first on the East Coast.

Design and permitting for the new campus are under way. Construction will begin in early 2018.

“Vantage’s expansion to Northern Virginia is in direct response to demand from our cloud and large technology enterprise customers, who have expansion plans on the east coast," said Sureel Choksi, Vantage president and CE, in a statement.

Northern Virginia leads the North American data center market with more than a 30 percent market share, according to JLL. And Loudoun County leads the region’s data center concentration, with more than 75 data centers and 10 million square feet of data center space either operational or under development, according to the Loudoun County Department of Economic Development.

This month Facebook announced plans to build a $1 billion data center in Henrico County, Va. And another data center in Henrico County is planned for the White Oak Technology Park in eastern Henrico and could cover 2.5 million square feet across four buildings. Also operator Peak 10 submitted plans to build a 72,500-square-foot data center off Villa Park Drive in northern Henrico.

Investments in the data center category in the first half of 2017 were double that of the entire year prior at $18.2 billion, according to CBRE. At this pace, investment in the data center sector — which includes all single-asset, portfolio, and entity-level/mergers and acquisition transactions — is on track to surpass the total for the three previous years combined.