Microsoft is looking to expand its presence around Des Moines, Iowa, with a new data center campus.
First reported by the Business Record, Microsoft this week filed a zoning request with the West Des Moines City Council for ‘Project Ruthenium.’
The company is looking to amend the City’s zoning map to designate the 103-acre site as a Light Industrial zoning district.
The site is located on the southwest corner of Veterans Parkway and SW 60th Street and is bordered by Woodland Avenue on the west. Details around the number, size, and capacity of the data centers planned for the site haven’t been shared.
"We anticipate closing on the property within the next couple weeks,” Microsoft representative Paul Englis told the council during the meeting. “Once that work is completed, then we will commence with the planning work with the city staff and the planning board through which we will submit the site plan and begin evaluation of what actually will be built on that particular project.”
The City Council approved the first reading of an ordinance and is expected to pass the request next month, following county staff recommendations. The state’s City Development Board approved a request to annex the land into West Des Moines earlier this month.
The Ruthenium site is located directly west of Microsoft’s existing Project Osmium campus and near an existing substation.
The Osmium site, on SW Kerry Street, was announced in 2016 and will span 1.7 million sq ft (158,000 sqm) of land once fully built out. The company was granted permission for a third of five buildings on the site in 2021 and permission for a fourth was granted earlier this year.
Microsoft is building out heavily in the Des Moines area. It has a number of projects – Project Ginger West, Project Ginger East, as well as Project Mountain, Project Alluvion, and Project Osmium at several locations in the city in various stages of development.
Project Ginger East will be located on about 130 acres south of Highway 5 and north of South County Line Road.
2022 also saw the company gain a permit in July for a data center at 3655 S.E. Soteria Ave. Issued to Microsoft contractor the Weitz Company, the permit was for an 184,600 sq ft facility under the description DSM 14. The plot is currently undeveloped land located close to the company’s future Project Ginger East location.
In the west of the city, the company is developing on 180 acres south of 11100 Booneville Road for what is known as Project Ginger West. The company recently filed to construct two data center buildings at the site known as DSM 42 and 43.
Both Ginger East and West will each be about 1.8 million square feet and each cost about $1 billion to develop.
Project Mountain, first announced in 2009 and expanded in 2011 and 2013, is a two-building campus on South 88th Street.
First announced in 2014, Project Alluvion is located on White Crane Road to the south of the Ginger East Site. It consists of eight buildings totaling more than one million sq ft (92,900 sqm).
