Google has spent $89m on two plots of land in Loudoun County, Virginia as it plans to build two more data centers, reports the Washington Business Journal.

Although the company has operated data centers in the state for some time, it only launched its Northern Virginia cloud region, us-east4, earlier this year.

Not quite Data Center Alley 

The first location, a 91-acre, $58m property in the Arcola Center adjacent to Dulles airport, is in the midst of a rezoning application, which could see the construction of 500,000 square feet of retail property, a 2.1m square feet data center and upwards of 1,100 new homes. The company reportedly plans to break ground on the facility early next year.

The other, a 57-acre site in the Stonewall Business Park, cost the company $31m.

The investment is yet another confirmation that Northern Virginia, by far the most dense data center and interconnection market in the United States, is still highly sought after by data center operators.

In the first part of this year, according to CBRE, the region saw 52MW of new net capacity, reaching  608MW in total. However, most of the growth was concentrated on “Data Center Alley” - the two sites purchased by Google are further away, so they were obtained for a fraction of the price the company would have paid to buy property in the heart of the data center hub.