PowerHouse Data Centers has acquired land in Charlotte, North Carolina, for a new campus.
The company, alongside real estate investment management firm Town Lane this week announced the completed purchase of 122 acres in Charlotte, via a joint venture partnership between both companies.
The site is the future home of PowerHouse Charlotte; a five-building, 2.5 million square feet (232,255 sqm) data center campus that will offer 300MW, with the potential to increase to 500MW, of secured power by April 2027.
Tyler Henritze, founder & managing partner, Town Lane, said: "We recognize the ongoing demand for digital infrastructure and that Charlotte has emerged as a compelling data center market given its access to renewable power and connectivity; which is why we are excited to partner with an experienced developer like PowerHouse, who has strong proven technical and power procurement capabilities, to develop this site."
News that PowerHouse was looking to develop a data center in Charlotte first surfaced in August 2023. The company was given zoning approval by Charlotte City Council a month later.
The full scope of the campus wasn't shared at the time, but it was said the project could see up to 2.5 million sq ft of data center space developed.
Brian Katz, PowerHouse president and co-founder, added: "Our deep real estate relationships are foundational to PowerHouse's success and instrumental in our ability to rewrite the data center development playbook. We have a tremendous amount of respect for Town Lane and are thrilled to collaborate on our first project together."
The site will have access to 15MW of bridging power in Q4 2026, given an existing adjacent substation, and has partnered with Duke Energy to build an additional substation on the site.
PowerHouse was founded by American Real Estate Partners (AREP) in 2022. It has partnered with Harrison Street in the past on some projects.
The company currently has a data center campus in Ashburn, Virginia, which was leased to CyrusOne in May 2023, and is planning developments at three other sites in the state, as well as projects in Nevada and Texas.
Founded in 2024 after raising $1.25 billion of institutional investor capital targeting opportunistic returns for its inaugural fund, Town Lane is a New York-based real estate investment manager. Founder Henritze was previously at Blackstone and served as a board member of QTS.
Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP is serving as legal counsel to Town Lane, and Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP is serving as legal counsel to PowerHouse. Eastdil Secured, LLC advised on the land sale.
The company recently formed a $5bn JV with data center firm Chirisa and asset manager Blue Owl to build data centers for AI cloud firm CoreWeave.
