Digital Realty to Enter Kansas City With 600 MW Facility

Digital Realty Trust Inc. has acquired a 1,440-acre powered land site in Kansas City, Kan., for $474 million. The REIT will develop a hyperscale facility on the site. The transaction marks its entrance into the Kansas City market.

To prop up the data center project, Digital Realty has entered into an Energy Service Agreement with Evergy, the local provider, for 600 megawatts of power by early 2028. The agreement is scalable up to 2 gigawatts after initial delivery.

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The company will develop its hyperscale campus in several phases. The first, planned to take shape at W. 103rd St. and Lexington Avenue in De Soto, Kan., will entail the construction of nine buildings across 280 acres, comprising roughly 3 million square feet.

The upcoming campus is part of Astra Enterprise Park, a 9,000-acre, master-planned megadevelopment located on the former Sunflower Army Ammunition Plant. The site is also home to Panasonic’s $4 billion EV battery manufacturing facility, which broke ground in 2022.

Digital Realty is also slated to acquire two different platforms later this year. It will pay $650 million for an additional 16 percent stake in Teraco, an African data center provider, bringing its total ownership share to 77 percent. The second deal is a $485 million transaction for the entirety of Columbia Capital.

Digital Realty keeps busy

Digital Realty continues to accelerate its data center investments. At the end of the first quarter, the company closed its inaugural U.S. hyperscale data center fund with $3.25 billion of total equity commitments. The fund will support the acquisition and development of assets in major markets, such as Northern Virginia, Santa Clara, Calif., Dallas, Atlanta, Charlotte, N.C., and New York City. The company will retain 20 percent ownership stake in the fund’s portfolio, while also serving as manager.

As AI-driven demand continues to create a wave of growth opportunities for data centers REITs, Digital Realty has emerged as one of the leading beneficiaries. Between 2016 and 2025, the company has expanded its total assets from $12 billion to nearly $49 billion.