Digital Realty Plans Major Data Center Expansion Across Southeast
Data center REIT Digital Realty is looking to build a pair of large-scale campuses in Charlotte and Atlanta that together could total as much as 600 megawatts of capacity.
In Charlotte, Digital Realty filed plans last week for what would be North Carolina’s largest data center campus, GovTech reports. The 156-acre campus would house more than 3M SF of data center space across two buildings, with the two-phase project ultimately yielding as much as 400 megawatts of capacity.
The Dallas-based data center giant acquired the site, located 12 miles west of downtown Charlotte at 12899 Moore’s Chapel Road, in November for $160M, according to the Charlotte Business Journal. The parcel is undeveloped but sits next to a major logistics complex used by Amazon. Rezoning approval from the Charlotte City Council will be required for the project to move forward as planned.
Further expansion in Charlotte is likely to follow for Digital Realty, with the company’s leadership saying on its quarterly earnings call Thursday that the firm has acquired three additional parcels in the Queen City. One of those parcels is adjacent to the Moore’s Chapel Road site — a 48-acre property that the company acquired for $20M.
The other two properties are adjacent to the company’s existing data center in the city — a 2-megawatt facility that the firm says it will expand to a 12-megawatt campus. The two downtown parcels were acquired for a combined $16M.
In Georgia, Digital Realty plans to build a 200-megawatt campus on 97 acres in the Atlanta suburb of Forest Park, company leaders said on the earnings call. The vacant property was acquired last quarter from TPA Group for $120M, according to CoStar. Digital Realty already has three data centers in the Atlanta market: two in downtown Atlanta and one in nearby Douglas County.
In addition to its land acquisitions and development plans, Digital Realty also revealed Thursday that it launched a $10B hyperscale-focused data center fund focused on U.S. markets. The fund, which raised $1.7B in the first closing, includes five operating properties and four development sites, with assets located in Northern Virginia, Dallas, Atlanta, Charlotte, New York and Northern California.
Digital Realty’s development plans capped a strong first quarter for the REIT, which reported data center revenues up 7% year-over-year and a record leasing backlog of $919M. The firm’s development pipeline grew to 814 megawatts, 63% of which is already preleased.
