COPT Defense Properties is planning a gigawatt-scale campus in Iowa.
The company this week announced it acquired a 365-acre land parcel near Des Moines in late September for $32 million to expand its data center shell program.
The existing zoning on the land allows for data center development, with COPT saying initial plans indicate the site can accommodate approximately 3.3 million square feet (306,580 sqm) of development and 1GW of power capacity. The site could total 15 buildings, each spanning 220,000 sq ft (20,440 sqm), and two substations.
Stephen E. Budorick, COPT Defense’s president & CEO, said: “Our land acquisition outside of Des Moines, Iowa provides a significant opportunity for us to expand our highly successful data center shell program to a new market.
Des Moines, the fifth largest hyperscale market in the country is already home to several of the largest hyperscalers in the world, which are drawn to the market given attractive land values, power availability, with abundant access to renewable energy, access to long-haul fiber lines, and tax incentives enacted by supportive state and local governments."
Budorick added the company aims to build out the parcel in phases and plans self-fund development of the site on a leverage-neutral basis.
News that COPT had acquired land in Van Meter, a city west of Des Moines in Dallas County, surfaced earlier this month.
The company’s Q3 2024 earnings presentation confirmed the site is in Van Meter, and is to be built out for an existing Fortune 100 cloud computing tenant.
Founded in 1988 as Royale Investments, Inc. and formerly known as Corporate Office Properties Trust, COPT develops, owns, and operates real estate across the US. The company, a real estate investment trust, mostly serves the US government, with a focus on defense.
COPT owns more than six million sq ft (557,420 sqm) of data shell space across some 30 single-tenant facilities – many as joint ventures with Blackstone. As well as government, the company targets hyperscale customers for its data centers.
Microsoft, which has a large number of data center projects around Des Moines, acquired more than 370 acres of land in Van Meter earlier this year. According to Faust, the tech giant could begin construction of a data center campus on the recently purchased land in December or early 2025.
Microsoft plans to build at least 10 data centers in the park. The data centers would each be about 227,000 square feet, she added.
Meta and Apple are also present in Des Moines, with COPT estimating the three companies total 850MW of capacity (150MW for Microsoft, 260MW for Meta, and 40MW for Apple).
It added that the three companies have another 1.07GW under development in the area (900MW for Microsoft, 40MW for Meta, and 135MW for Apple).
