EXCLUSIVE: $40M C-PACE Loan Funds Data Center Development At Former Compaq Campus
The 2.3M SF former Compaq Computer campus in northwest Houston will house a 774K SF modernized data center with the help of $40M of green financing, deal participants shared exclusively with Bisnow.
Lone Star PACE and Nuveen Green Capital secured the commercial property assessed clean energy financing for the first phase of VivaVerse Solutions’ “deep retrofit” of a 774K SF facility at 11445 Compaq Center W. Drive, according to a news release. The building is part of the 66-acre campus at State Highway 249 and Louetta Road that was rebranded as Viva Center earlier this year.
C-PACE financing has risen in popularity as banks have pulled back from lending, leaving a sizable gap in the capital stack for new construction and renovation projects, Lone Star PACE President Lee McCormick told Bisnow.
“It’s great long-term, low-cost financing for a project that helps debt service coverage ratios, that helps cash flow,” McCormick said.
The financing incentivizes developers to make efficiency and water upgrades to their properties, making it a win-win, he said. The funding at Viva Center will be used to install energy-efficient windows, LED lighting, advanced HVAC systems and high-efficiency plumbing upgrades for the first phase of the data center, the release states.
Viva Center includes more than a dozen buildings with a mix of offices, manufacturing and distribution facilities, parking garages and amenity space. It was built in the 1980s as the headquarters for Compaq Computer Corp. before the company was acquired by Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
HPE in 2020 began building a new campus in Spring after flooding in 2016 and 2017. HPE opened its new headquarters in April 2022, shortly after JLL announced the sale of 11445 Compaq Center W. Drive to an affiliate of Mexcor International beverage distribution company.
Eduardo Morales is the CEO of Mexcor International as well as the head of Morales Capital Group, which announced the Viva Center rebranding and a 54K SF lease for SynergenX, a hormone replacement therapy company, in March.
VivaVerse Solutions is a subsidiary of Morales Capital Group that is leading the redevelopment of Viva Center and envisions turning it into a mixed-use tech hub with public gathering areas, events and apartments, the Houston Business Journal reported.
“At ViVa Center, our commitment to technological innovation and forward-thinking design drives the integration of state-of-the-art building systems,” Freddy Vaca, president of VivaVerse Solutions, said in the release. “Partnering with Nuveen Green Capital and Lone Star PACE has been instrumental in aligning our advanced sustainability objectives with our investment returns.”
The first phase of the data center project is about 50% complete and should be operational in the next six to nine months, said Sean Ribble, senior director of originations at Nuveen Green Capital. The building was formerly a distribution and manufacturing facility for Compaq computers, he said.
“It was never a data center, but it does have a lot of the infrastructure … in terms of load and capacity and the footprint of the building, it’s perfect for a data center,” Ribble said.
At full build-out, the Viva Center development will offer 250 megawatts of power, a chilled water plant and a natural gas pipeline for energy generation, the release states.
