Fairfax County is looking to tap into Northern Virginia's booming data center market with a new, 22-acre campus several miles east of Loudoun's "data center alley."

The Fairfax County Planning Commission approved CoreSite Realty's proposal to build a four-phase data center project on Reston's Sunrise Technology Park, RestonNow reports.

CoreSite purchased the office park from Brookfield Office Properties in August 2016 for $50M. The 22-acre property sits just off the Dulles Toll Road near the Fairfax County Parkway intersection. The site houses four office buildings totaling 315K SF, but CoreSite sought to convert them to data centers.

The developer's proposal called for a combination of demolitions and adaptive reuse conversions that will create up to 934K SF of data center space over four phases. The developer plans to begin on the southern portion of the campus in Phases 1 and 2, moving to the center by Phase 3 and the northernmost building for Phase 4.

Northern Virginia has emerged as the largest data center market in the U.S., but the majority of the facilities have been built near Route 28 in Loudoun County. This project, sitting east of Dulles International Airport, signals the market is expanding east into Fairfax County as demand for data centers continues to grow. A representative for CoreSite told RestonNow the developer selected the location to be near enterprise users in Reston.