QTS has been named as the company building a large data center campus outside Richmond, Virginia.
As reported by Richmond Bizsense and Virginia Business, QTS has been confirmed as the customer behind Hourigan’s 620-acre project in Sandston and has acquired all the land for the development.
A limited liability company belonging to QTS bought around 397 acres at 3250 and 3555 E. Williamsburg Road for $118.8 million from a limited liability company belonging to Richmond development company Hourigan last month.
Hourigan had purchased the land that same day, buying about 223 acres for $38.05m from Atlantic Crossing and 174 acres from Vienna Finance for $20.5m.
QTS previously acquired the other approximately 225 acres of the site and some four outlying acres from Harmon Properties, Brenda H. Sargent, and John C. Harmon in several December 2023 transactions totaling $18m.
“[QTS] came to us with a vision and a plan for eastern Henrico that allowed them to have complete control of that entire site,” Hourigan founder and CEO Mark Hourigan told Virginia Business, “and in evaluating all the options and ways that we might be able to consider moving forward with that, we thought that was the best long-term outcome for the county and for that site, is to have someone with a proven track record [and] the capital behind them to be able to make that kind of investment.”
Henrico County Board of Supervisors approved Hourigan's request for more than 622 acres of land outside Richmond to be rezoned for data centers in May.
Hourigan first proposed a data center development in Henrico County in December 2023, at the time describing it as a 320-acre data center campus. In March 2024, the company filed to rezone the 622 acres to develop what was being referred to as White Oak Technology Park 2. According to that filing, it could have up to 13 data centers built on-site.
Prior to the Hourigan request, a different organization applied to rezone 530 acres on the site for industrial uses, including distribution centers. This filing was submitted by Atlantic Crossing LLC, which withdrew the request in 2022.
The new campus would be located a few miles away from the original White Oak Technology Park, where Meta and QTS operate facilities.
QTS operates a data center site around a mile south of the new campus at 6000 Technology Blvd. QTS acquired the former Qimonda semiconductor fabrication facility in April 2010 for $12m through a bankruptcy-court auction and subsequently converted it to a data center.
That facility currently spans 1.3 million sq ft (120,800 sqm) and offers 110MW of capacity across three buildings. The company notes that it owns 200 acres of adjacent land and has around one million sq ft (92,900 sqm) of further expansion capacity. It filed to expand the site in 2022.
2022 also saw the company officially announce that it is planning an up to 240MW data center at its Richmond Mega Data Center campus in Henrico, Virginia, after acquiring another 200 acres at the site.
QTS currently operates five data center campuses across Virginia; one each in Richmond and Manassas, and three in the Ashburn area.
The company – which was taken private in 2021 after being acquired by Blackstone – is also interested in acquiring more than 800 acres in Prince William County in Northern Virginia as part of the controversial PW Digital Gateway development proposal.
