Digital Realty Sells 33-Year-Old Airport Data Center
A California investment firm picked up a data center built in 1992 near Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.
An affiliate of Menlo Park, California-based Menlo Equities purchased 760 Doug Davis Drive in Hapeville for $65.5M from Digital Doug Davis LLC, an entity registered to the Dallas address of Digital Realty Trust, according to Fulton County records.
The 383K SF facility is off Virginia Avenue and just outside the airport. Digital Realty purchased the facility from Delta Air Lines in 2011 for $63M, according to the Reonomy real estate database.
Neither firm responded to a request for comment as of press time.
Menlo bought the 33-year-old data center for $171 per SF, a relative bargain compared to the $300 per SF average for data center sales in Georgia over the past year, according to data from Avison Young. The average data center sold for $465 per SF nationally.
Buying older data centers and spending to upgrade their power capacity makes sense considering Georgia Power is fielding 8 gigawatts of pent-up demand from potential data center users in Georgia, Avison Young associate Nick Steen said.
“For an existing data center, upsizing the power is a great opportunity,” Steen said.
Atlanta is the fastest-growing and second-largest data center market in the country after developers tripled capacity by more than 1,200 megawatts over the past year, according to CBRE. The metro area led all major data center markets in 2024 with 700 MW of absorption.
Menlo has been an active investor in the metro area market. In 2020, the firm purchased 30 Ivan Allen Blvd., the 15-story, 281K SF office building in Downtown Atlanta overlooking the Interstate 75-85 interchange. Menlo also purchased the empty office portion of Lincoln Properties’ Echo Street West development in December for around $60M.
Digital Realty owns three other data centers in Metro Atlanta, including the 10-story 56 Marietta St. colocation tower in Downtown Atlanta. Digital Realty also filed an application in May to develop a 1.9M SF data center campus on 97 acres within the former U.S. Army base Fort Gillem in Forest Park.
The REIT plans to create a mix of hyperscale and colocation facilities at the Fort Gillem project, citing the site’s proximity to Downtown Atlanta, vacancy rates of less than 1% and competitive-costing power as lures for the project, Digital Realty Chief Investment Officer Greg Wright said during an April earnings call.
The firm also announced a new data center campus in Charlotte earlier this year.
“We think those are both critical markets for us, as we’re really excited to have between those two projects over 600 MW of developable capacity,” Wright said.
