Compass Datacenters Buys 120 Acres Near Phoenix For New Campus
Compass Datacenters has acquired 120 acres for a data center campus in El Mirage, Arizona, around 20 miles northwest of Phoenix.
Compass purchased the property from logistics real estate firm Dermody Properties in a $79.3M deal, the Phoenix Business Journal reports. The parcel, part of Dermody’s 961-acre warehouse and industrial development area known as the LogistiCenter at Copperwing, is the second in the complex to be sold off for data center development in as many weeks.
On May 31, Microsoft paid Dermody $258M for 283 acres in El Mirage in a cash transaction, adding to the 150 acres the tech giant already owns north of the site, the PBJ reported. Microsoft has already broken ground on data center projects in the city.
The parcel Compass acquired sits at the intersection of El Mirage Road and Peoria Avenue. In February 2023, Azbex reported that Compass was looking to build a three-building, 108-megawatt campus with more than 600K SF of data centers. City officials approved a site plan for the project later last year, although it is unclear if Compass’ plans for the site have changed.
Compass, which was acquired last year by a partnership between Brookfield and a Canadian pension fund, specializes in campus-scale data center developments focused on Big Tech hyperscale tenants. The firm has inked several major transactions since the start of the year, launching a $200M development near Dallas, acquiring land for a major facility near Columbus, Ohio, and beginning work on a large campus at the former Sears headquarters near Chicago.
The firm is no stranger to the Arizona market, operating a 242 MW campus in the nearby city of Goodyear.
While Phoenix is a major data center hub — the fourth-largest U.S. market as of the end of last year, according to CBRE — much of the existing development has been southeast of downtown Phoenix, in cities like Mesa and Chandler.
Amazon is planning a pair of campuses in Mesa, while a developer operating as Pacific Proving is also pursuing a major campus there. In February, Menlo Equities announced plans to raze a Phoenix office park to make way for a data center campus.
