Chirisa and PowerHouse are expanding an existing data center campus outside Richmond, Virginia.
Chirisa Technology Parks (CTP) and AREP-owned PowerHouse Data Centers this week announced the acquisition of 104 acres in Chesterfield County, directly adjacent to CTP’s existing technology campus.
Development at the newly acquired site, which will be introduced to market as Digital Drive, will include five turn-key AI-ready facilities totaling more than 600,000 square feet (55,740 sqm) of space and an initial 300MW of capacity from an in-development substation.
The companies said the eventual goal is to add more than 1GW of power capacity to the site.
Digital Drive’s first facility is expected to be delivered by 2026, with full campus completion projected by 2028
“Digital Drive is another incredible project for CTP and PowerHouse as we continue our expansion into Chesterfield County together,” said Doug Fleit, founder and CEO of PowerHouse. “When completed, the campus will provide scalable, flexible infrastructure that accelerates time-to-market for hyperscalers and enterprises alike. As the market continues to shift towards higher-density, AI-ready workloads, Richmond is becoming a central hub for these types of developments, and we are proud to play a key role in that growth.”
Chirisa said the campus will integrate CTP’s proprietary direct-on-chip liquid cooling design, which it said is nearly twice as power-efficient as traditional air-cooled systems.
The campus is also collaborating with Chesterfield County to source water for the site from a local reclaimed water system.
Meg Davis, head of design, development & delivery for CTP, added: “Speaking both personally and on behalf of my CTP and PowerHouse colleagues, I am thrilled we have closed on this exciting acquisition; this was a true team effort. Digital Drive is a game changer for Richmond and Chesterfield County. We’re excited to start construction immediately and leverage our proprietary high-density AI-Ready design, to deliver a prime hyperscale campus that meets demand for turnkey hyperscale facilities”.
Owned by Chirisa Investments, Chirisa Technology Parks was established in late 2022.
The company owns sites across Virginia, Illinois, Washington, and New Jersey – it says it currently offers more than 1 million square feet (92,900 sqm) of data center capacity, with a pipeline of more than 1GW under development.
A wholly owned division of American Real Estate Partners, PowerHouse has 30 data centers currently in planning or underway, representing more than 2.3GW of power across Virginia, Texas, Nevada, and North Carolina.
PowerHouse and Chirisa announced a partnership earlier this year to jointly expand a number of the latter’s sites. The two companies also recently formed a $5 billion joint venture with asset manager Blue Owl to develop large-scale AI/HPC data centers for CoreWeave.
The first 28MW building at the company's existing Meadowville campus, known as CTP-01, was recently leased to CoreWeave.
The initial 120MW of capacity under the recently-announced JV will be delivered for CoreWeave in 2025 and 2026 at CTP's 350-acre Meadowville campus through the CTP-02 and CTP-03 data centers.
The Meadowville campus – at 1401 Meadowville Technology Parkway – was originally built for Capital One in 2013. The bank first announced it was investing $150 million in building a new facility in Chesterfield County in 2012
After Capital One exited the site, it was then taken over by Chirisa subsidiary Digital Fortress. The company relaunched the facility in May 2021, saying at the time the site had day-one availability of 18,270 sq ft (1,700 sqm) and 4.1MW of capacity in a single data hall, with a 200,000 sq ft (18,500 sqm) shell core expansion space supporting up to 25MW, ready to deliver.
Chirisa Technology Parks was then established in late 2022, at which point the investment company pivoted the site away from retail colo through Digital Fortress to focus on hyperscale/single-tenant leasing, saying the campus could support up to 500,000 sq ft (46,450 sqm) of floorspace and up to 100MW.
