180-Acre Data Center Campus Approved Near Richmond

Newport Equities, an affiliate of Province Group, has won rezoning approval for the final piece of a 180-acre data center campus project in Powhatan County, Va. This marks another major data center investment move in Greater Richmond, positioning the area to attract more hyperscale and colocation operators.

The Powhatan County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a rezoning application for a 60-acre site. This follows an earlier approval for an adjacent 120-acre property that is located at 1318 Page Road in Midlothian, according to Data Center Dynamics. The two parcels will comprise a 180-acre data center campus called Powhatan Technology Park.

The proposed complex will rise about 15 miles west of Richmond’s central business district, benefiting from multiple transmission lines on site, including 500 kilovolts, 230 kilovolts and 115 kilovolts.

Dominion Energy will energize the greenfield campus with an initial deployment of 365 megawatts. The site is approved for four two-story buildings and more than 2 million square feet of data center space.

JLL Executive Managing Director Matt Gallagher, who will lead marketing for Powhatan Technology Park, told Commercial Property Executive that the park’s data centers will have closed-loop or air-cooled mechanical system. “Both mechanical systems are supported by a minimal amount of water … The quantity of water required is similar to other commercial developments.”

Gallagher contrasted Powhatan County’s support for data center development with that in the longstanding data center mecca of Northern Virginia: “The Powhatan County Board of Supervisors and Economic Development Authority unanimously supported the rezoning and the development of a data center campus on the site. Other jurisdictions in Virginia are resisting data center development that require the construction of new transmission lines through residential communities.”

He added, “The site does not require any transmission line extensions, because it is adjacent to two separate 230 kV transmission lines which are required to support data center power distribution and is in a priority position in the Dominion’s power queue. The location, just miles west of Richmond with long haul and metro fiber connections nearby, satisfies latency requirements for cloud, social, enterprise and AI workloads.”

NoVa demand, development shift west

In reviewing research on data center markets, it’s hard to find “Virginia” without “Northern” in front of it. The NoVa region remains the nation’s centerpiece for data center inventory and continues to be a star for both absorption and demand, according to a midyear report from JLL. Projects there that are planned or underway total 7 gigawatts of capacity. 

However, a late August report on Axios.com called Richmond “America’s hottest data center hub,” based in part on second-quarter data from Avison Young. That report said that Richmond has “experienced exceptional expansion, leading the nation in both absolute and relative terms, with its total inventory increasing more than sevenfold year to date as development from the Ashburn/Sterling corridor pushes further south.”

Richmond has seen its data center inventory increase by 720 megawatts year-to-date, alongside 650 megawatts of net absorption, Avison Young stated.