A global data center company with a campus in Northern Virginia has bought into Henrico’s White Oak Technology Park.
Iron Mountain Inc., a data center developer and information management company based in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, purchased 66 acres at 6110 Technology Creek Drive for just over $8 million earlier this month.
Henrico’s Economic Development Authority was the seller in the deal, which was recorded with the county Nov. 1.
Iron Mountain, a 73-year-old firm that trades on the New York Stock Exchange, has developed data centers in Europe, India and the U.S., where it has facilities in 11 markets, including a 142-acre data center campus in Northern Virginia.
The campus in Prince William County is planned for nine data centers and has five operational so far totaling 2 million square feet, according to Iron Mountain’s website.
A request to the company seeking comment on the White Oak purchase and plans for that site was not returned Tuesday.
Henrico EDA Director Anthony Romanello confirmed the sale but deferred to Iron Mountain for further comment. He said the site had been actively marketed since White Oak opened in 1996. An assessed value was not reflected in the county’s online property record for the site.
White Oak Technology Park in eastern Henrico. (BizSense file photo)
The 66-acre site is along Elko Road and beside the Bank of America data center on Technology Creek Drive. It’s also next to LL Flooring’s 1 million-square-foot distribution center, which recently sold to data center giant QTS for $104 million as part of the Henrico-based retailer’s recent bankruptcy filing and transition back to Lumber Liquidators.
QTS owns an existing data center campus nearby in White Oak and in the past year has added over 600 acres along Williamsburg Road in two deals totaling more than $136 million.
Iron Mountain’s deal adds to a surge in data center investment and development across Virginia in recent years. It also tees up more potential revenue for Henrico’s recently launched housing trust fund to address housing affordability in the county.
Earlier this year, around the time of their approval of data center use for the 622 acres now owned by QTS, Henrico supervisors established the housing trust fund with an initial $60 million in previously unbudgeted revenues from data centers. Revenue from existing and future data centers is to be used to support the trust fund going forward.
Last month, the county announced the first two projects to qualify for the trust fund program, including HHHunt’s Parkside Townes, a 123-unit townhome development in Sandston. Twenty-five of those units are to be set aside for first-time homebuyers with household incomes between 60-120% of the area median income.
Azalea data center project withdrawn
In other Henrico data center news, a 27-acre project planned for the area around the Azalea Flea Market has been withdrawn by applicant BWS Enterprises. BWS had been working with Atlanta-based developer DC Blox, which was planning a 10-megawatt data center and potentially a second, 40-megawatt facility on the site at Azalea Avenue and Richmond Henrico Turnpike.
A rezoning request for the project was scheduled to go before county supervisors at their meeting Tuesday night. The Henrico Planning Commission had recommended denial at its meeting last month.
When are the politicians, the eco/carbon zealots, and naturalists going to tell the public the truth about this industry’s consumption problems? Enormous demands of electricity and water. Enormous. But that’s how the .1% stay rich: force-feed the hoi polloi a narrative about the danger of cow farts and how annual vacations utilizing air travel are destroying the planet. Not their business. JP Morgan Chase report: Data centers use substantial amounts of water—often taken from drinking water resources—in order to cool servers that generate significant amounts of heat. On average, a mid-sized data center uses about 300,000 gallons per day, while… Read more »
The water used in cooling systems absorbs the heat from servers, and then it’s often treated and recycled back into the system. Sometimes, excess heated water is released safely into nearby bodies of water.
Just a question George: if the water is used solely for cooling, shouldn’t it be readily reusable, even recycling as in a car wash, or as steam for energy purposes? Where does that much water go after the cooling process?
Genuinely curious about this and the replies.. does the water used in cooling the servers enter the waste water system? I can’t imagine utilities allowing water to leave their system, then return to the system, without some sort of treatment. And I don’t imagine there’s a separate system to move water for things like car washes, steam for power, etc. Any actual info on this would be most appreciated.
This article covers it quite well.
https://dgtlinfra.com/data-center-water-usage/
The most recent trends in data center construction utilize much less water through air cooled or closed water systems. The issue with those is they tend to use more energy so it is a trade off.
Honestly the data centers don’t want to use any more energy than they need to. It costs them money. So research continues on ways to reduce power usage in this industry. My hope is it will continue to get better while still offering the benefits.
Dominion built a solar farm specifically to power these White Oak development datacenters. It is well documented. I wonder if you would like a cement plant or chemical manufacturing facility instead of the data center?
Fallacy of the False Dilemma.
Stanford, I believe, offers a free introduction to logic course.
I’m not sure where you get your news, but the amount of energy and water needed by data centers gets lots of coverage.Those you seem to denigrate but hold responsible for informing you of this have been covering the issue as well.
I commend the superb work of Ivy Main to you. Her insightful coverage of energy and environmental issues across Virginia are as good as it gets. For example:
https://virginiamercury.com/2024/04/03/now-what-the-heck-do-we-do-about-data-centers/
I’m not seeing any local news of politicians or conservationists addressing this.
Only rubber stamped approvals.
The article I linked to is by a local news source and written by an expert in Virginian environmental issues.
Here’s some more coverage – today – about a meeting of industry and policy makers on this exact topic.
https://virginiamercury.com/2024/11/14/google-virginia-policy-makers-discuss-growing-data-center-demand/
The reality is that these data centers will get built somewhere. They are enormous tax generators for the localities so they are very popular with politicians. At the end of the day if Virginia needs 5M extra gallons of water a day and 800MW additional power for the next hyperscale project does it really make a difference to the local county citizen if it’s located in Henrico or Louisa or Roanoke or Winchester or Surry, etc? Or what if it ends up going to another state due to public pushback? The facility is still going to use the same amount… Read more »
And what happens? The government spends it! It’s amazing what some people will tolerate for a price… that they don’t even collect.