The home of a former Bay Area construction materials plant may be redeveloped as a nearly half-million SF data center.

Valley Oak Partners plans to build a 490K SF data center on the site of a former United States Gypsum Corp. manufacturing plant in Fremont, California, just north of San Jose. According to documents filed with city officials last week, the San Jose-based developer hopes to build a 90-megawatt facility on the vacant, 12.5-acre property.

The proposed data center, first reported by the San Francisco Business Times, would consist of a single, 50-foot-tall building with 35 backup generators and primary power supplied by utility PG&E. No timeline was given for the project’s completion. According to SFBT, Valley Oak Partners’ leadership says the site is well-suited to data centers due to nearby rail lines that give it access to fiber and power infrastructure.

Valley Oak Partners acquired the site in 2021, part of a $20M deal for three connected properties totaling 24 acres. The land previously housed a pair of USG manufacturing facilities, although both were demolished in 2021 by Bay West Development, the site's prior owner. Valley Oak Partners hasn't indicated whether data centers could be slated for the remaining land purchased in the deal.

While the Bay Area has one of the world’s largest concentrations of data centers, the city of Fremont has few such facilities and none close to the scale proposed at the former USG site. But Silicon Valley is one of the most constrained data center markets in the world — and as Bisnow previously reported, a shortage of land and available power has developers looking for nearby brownfield sites wherever they can find them.

And just as the site is off the industry’s beaten path, Valley Oak Partners is a newcomer to the data center landscape. The developer has been involved in a number of projects across different asset classes throughout the Bay Area, but there is no record of any previous experience with data centers.