Rowan Digital Infrastructure is planning to triple its footprint in Quantum Loophole’s Maryland campus.
“Building on the success and momentum of our inaugural project, we're delighted to unveil our second and third project sites in Frederick County,” the company said this week.
Rowan said it will be breaking ground on its first project in Maryland, the Frederick Data Center, this spring for a Fall 2025 completion. The company gained received unanimous approval (5-0) from the Frederick County Planning Commission to develop the 300MW facility in January.
The project, also known as the Bauxite Data Center, would see Rowan develop four single-story buildings totaling 777,150 sq ft (72,200 sqm) across 151 acres, along with an on-site substation from Potomac Edison.
The company – previously known as Rowan Green Data – hasn’t shared planned specifications, but images suggest Project II, to the northeast of the original site, will span four buildings. Project III, located to the north of the original site and west of Project II, looks set to span three buildings.
The company is aiming to file for planning permission for both sites in the summer.
Maryland isn’t currently a major data center market, but the Quantum Loophole campus, near Adamstown just north of Virginia's Loudoun County, is seeking to create a massive data center park that could reach up to 2GW.
Led by former Terremark and CyrusOne executive Snowhorn, the company has partnered with TPG Real Estate Partners (TREP) and is developing a 2,100-acre, park on the former Alcoa Eastalco Works aluminum smelting plant site.
Maryland recently amended its regulations around backup generators, easing restrictions for data center firms. The move was celebrated by Quantum Loophole, which claims it lost a customer due to the previous requirements.
Quantum’s first tenant, Aligned Data Centers, wanted 168 diesel generators capable of delivering 504MW for its full build on the site. The company pulled out after only being granted a provisional exemption for up to 70MW of diesel generators. Aligned had planned to build 3.3 million sq ft (306,580 sqm) of data center capacity.
Quantum Loophole this month announced it had sold 151 acres on the campus to an unidentified customer.
Set up in 2021 by Quinbrook and Birch Infrastructure, Rowan is also developing a 300MW campus in Temple, Texas, and a four-building campus in Oregon.
Rowan has other developments listed on its website across North America (though some have since been removed) including data center projects Meriwether and Schwab in Oregon, Matterhorn in California, and Moriah, Cinco, and Brown in Texas.
Update: Josh Snowhorn, Founder & CEO at Quantum Loophole, said: “We are excited for the incredible momentum and progress with our clients at the site. We expect all of our clients to rapidly make progress on their developments.“
