AREP JV Lands Full-Building Lease For Its First Virginia Data Center Project
CyrusOne has signed a deal to lease an entire newly built data center in the heart of Virginia's Data Center Alley from an American Real Estate Partners subsidiary.
PowerHouse, a joint venture between Tysons-based AREP and Chicago investment firm Harrison Street, announced Friday that KKR-owned colocation provider CyrusOne has signed a 30-year lease for the entirety of its spec-built, 60-megawatt data center in Ashburn.
The ABX-1 data center will be the first operational development for PowerHouse, which formally launched last year. The venture has five additional data center projects planned across Loudoun County as AREP continues a pivot toward digital infrastructure in the world’s largest data center hub.
Located on 10.3 acres the firm acquired in 2021 for $1.5M, the partially built facility will consist of a two-story building totaling 265K SF. CyrusOne will be leasing the building as what data center developers term a “powered shell,” meaning that the developer provides the building, power and fiber connectivity with the interior left bare to be built out by the tenant.
Construction is expected to be complete by October, according to PowerHouse. Initially, the facility will provide around 15 MW of capacity. An on-site 300 MW substation, jointly developed with utility Dominion Energy, would increase the data center’s capacity up to around 60 MW, with the remaining power distributed to the surrounding area. The substation is expected to come online by the end of 2025.
The project is the first of six data center projects the AREP subsidiary is undertaking across Loudoun County, representing 2.1M SF of data center space. The $1B data center push is at the heart of a shift toward digital infrastructure by AREP, which previously focused on office properties.
In addition to the ABX-1 data center in Ashburn, PowerHouse plans three data centers totaling 1.1M SF in nearby Sterling, as well as a pair of data centers totaling 54 MW in Arcola. Construction on both projects is expected to start next year.
