Blackstone’s QTS Planning $1.5B Ohio Data Center Project
Blackstone is continuing to ramp up its investment in data centers through its QTS Data Centers subsidiary, with the latest plan involving a $1.5B investment in a growing Ohio market.
QTS plans to build four new data centers on two sites in New Albany, a Columbus suburb that is rapidly emerging as one of the Midwest’s primary data center hubs. The project was first reported by Columbus Business First.
The quartet of new data centers will be built on a pair of properties totaling 93 acres that QTS acquired for $11.2M earlier this month. Located near each other on the same road, each property will include two data centers and administrative offices. Details of the project emerged last week at a New Albany City Council hearing, where local officials approved a property tax exemption for the development.
QTS has yet to sign any tenants for the new facilities, Columbus Business First reported, nor has the project’s total power usage been reported. Still, construction is expected to begin in March, with an estimated completion date in the spring of 2025.
The proposed New Albany data centers are part of a growing development pipeline for Overland Park, Kansas-based QTS, which has rapidly expanded its footprint since being acquired by Blackstone in 2021 in a $10B take-private deal. Blackstone announced in July that it would be ramping up its investment in the data center space, deploying $8B in development funding through QTS.
On a quarterly earnings call last week, Blackstone’s leadership indicated that QTS has become the investment giant's largest growth driver.
“Our data center business, QTS … was the single largest source of appreciation at the firm, driven by explosive growth in data creation that is being accelerated by the AI revolution,” Blackstone CEO Jonathan Gray told analysts. “Since privatizing the company two years ago, lease capacity has grown sixfold with the development pipeline pre-leased to major tech companies, and we are evaluating additional deployment opportunities in the space.”
While QTS may be rapidly expanding, so has the overall data center footprint throughout central Ohio and in New Albany, in particular. The region has emerged as one of the country’s fastest-growing data center hubs, particularly for hyperscale tech giants like Amazon and Google.
Amazon Web Services already operates three separate campuses near Columbus, and it announced plans in June to invest $7.8B on new development in the area. This comes on top of AWS’ commitment to spend $3.5B in New Albany.
Google is also growing in the area, committing in August to $3.7B of new data center investment across central Ohio. Microsoft is also considering development in New Albany, acquiring a 184-acre parcel in June for $57M.
