A Virginia developer that hasn't previously built data centers is now pivoting to the property type for a 400-acre site where it had once hoped to build a senior housing community near Richmond, a red-hot data center market.

HHHunt filed plans with Virginia’s Hanover County for what it is branding the Hunting Hawk Technology Park, a campus near the community of Wyndham planned to host 3.9M SF of data center space across 10 buildings.

The project, first reported by Richmond BizSense, would also see the build-out of electrical substations and other transmission infrastructure on the property, and it would require approvals of zoning and land use changes by county officials.  HHHunt indicated it has not secured an end user for the proposed campus.

HHHunt has no prior track record of building data centers. The firm is a longtime developer of large-scale residential and commercial projects in Virginia and North Carolina, including the planned community of Wyndham adjacent to the proposed technology park.

But six years after its plan to turn the site into a 900-unit housing development fell through, the company’s leadership says it determined that data centers represent the best path forward for the property.

“We’ve done a lot of studies trying to figure out what is the highest and best use since we’re not able to do residential there, and the technology park just makes sense from our perspective,” said Jonathan Ridout, HHHunt’s vice president of real estate development, according to Richmond BizSense.

“You’ve seen a lot of uptick in need for technology parks, and this area is well-located with the power that’s there.”

In 2016, HHHunt filed plans to turn the Hanover County property into an age-restricted community for residents 55 and up. But developing that project required building an access road that extended into neighboring Henrico County, where officials opposed it due to what they claimed would be its adverse impact on local traffic. HHHunt lost a prolonged legal battle with the county over the connector road in 2019, forcing the firm to abandon the entire project.

In switching planned uses for the site, the developer is hoping to tap into the country’s fastest-growing data center development hotbed.

No American city is adding data centers faster than Richmond: The market’s inventory surged more than sevenfold in the first half of the year, adding more capacity than any other U.S. market, according to Avison Young. More than 9 gigawatts of development are planned or underway near Richmond, a pipeline that would dwarf the region’s existing inventory.

Elsewhere in Hanover County, developer Tract is building a 1,200-acre site it says could eventually support 2.4 GW of capacity.