Tech Giants are Digging Into the Southeast and Midwest for New Data Centers
Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple are meeting the demand for new data centers by building throughout the country, especially in the Southeast and Midwest.
Virginia is seeing the most action, but South Carolina, Ohio, Iowa, Missouri and Nevada are also getting some new data center construction from Big Tech.
For these Big Tech companies the name of the game is expansion.
All four companies are working on increasing the size of their existing data center campuses with new buildings to store data.
Let’s dig into ConstructionWire’s data for more details on projects that have been updated in the last quarter.
The Mountain View, CA-based search engine giant has 9 data centers under construction or in planning through the country, including one in Virginia.
What data centers is Google planning?
Details are scarce, but Google has a 1.5 million-square-foot data center planned in Leesburg, VA, a historic town in northern Virginia and the county seat of Loudoun County.
That project is still early in the planning process and, according to a Loudoun County representative, a timeline hasn’t been announced by the company yet. In 2017, they began compiling land for this project.
In Kansas City, the Paris of the Plains, Google has plans for another data center with a price tag of $600 million on 80 acres in the Hunt Midwest Business Park.
A construction schedule for this project hasn’t been announced and the plans for the project haven’t been finalized. In fact, the possibility has been raised of the data center being built underground.
Does Google have any data centers currently under construction?
In Moncks Corner, SC, construction is under way on an expansion to Google’s data center campus.
Work started in summer 2019 and will continue through the end of 2020 in Moncks Corner, which is perhaps best known for being the hometown of Charlamagne Tha God.
In Nevada, a hyperscale Google data center is being built inside the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center.
Work on this project also started in summer 2019, but will continue until 2021 for this Silver Springs, NV project.
The social media behemoth has been building data center complexes throughout the country and BuildCentral has been following the progress of its central Iowa campus since it was announced.
Four data centers have been built since 2013 in Altoona, IA.
Facebook is countering the amount of energy these centers are going to consume with a wind farm.
What’s the status of Facebook’s data center campus in central Iowa?
In Altoona, Iowa, a fifth data center building is in planning as part of Facebook’s data center complex.
This fifth building will give Facebook another million square feet on the north side of its existing data center campus. Construction is expected to cost $400 million.
BuildCentral confirmed that Turner Construction is the general contractor on this project in December. Sheehan Nagle Hartray is the architect.
What data centers does Facebook have under construction?
Facebook has a $1.5 billion data center project under construction in Virginia.
In late 2019, Facebook broke ground on three additional data center buildings that will have a combined 1,530,000 square feet at the company’s Sandston, VA campus.
Sandston is in Henrico County, just outside Virginia’s capital of Richmond. This is an expansion of the company’s existing 300-acre campus and a total of five buildings.
Construction should be done in early 2022.
What about Amazon and Apple Data Center Construction?
Amazon and Apple are also expanding their data center campuses with more construction for data storage.
AMAZON
Like Facebook, Amazon is working on expanding on an existing data center campus with their latest project, although in their case the project is in New Albany, OH for its web services division.
In December 2019, Amazon secured a property tax abatement from the city of New Albany, OH for a third data center in the Franklin County, OH town. This data center will be 170,000 square feet.
A schedule hasn’t been announced, but they recently purchased 112 acres.
APPLE
In Maiden, NC, Apple is working on an expansion of its 23-acre data center campus.
Details haven’t been released but the city approved in October 2019 an annexation that will allow the project to move forward.
No timeline has been announced for this project.
Apple clearly likes the Tar Heel State. They have been operating data centers in North Carolina since 2009.
ConstructionWire will continue to update these and other large data center construction projects.
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