Microsoft is looking to expand its data center footprint in Mecklenburg County, Virginia.

The company has filed with the US Army Corps of Engineers to develop 490 acres of land adjacent to its existing AVC17 data center campus south of Highway 58 and east of Panhandle Road.

According to the application, Microsoft will develop a new data center campus on the site that "can utilize nearby existing data center infrastructure."

The project includes the construction of three one-story data center buildings, along with access roads, an on-site electrical substation, and a water storage facility.

A document attached to the application stated that the new campus is needed to address "expanding customer demand for cloud platform service in the region as teleworking capacities, cloud-based data storage and operating platforms, gaming, and contactless living behaviors have increased in recent years."

It added: "The project is located within the southern Virginia region Regional Network Group (RNG), where existing data centers are outgrowing design capacity much faster than originally anticipated. These capacity issues are related to the push for greater teleworking capacities and cloud-based storage. Because of construction timelines, the applicant is planning now for existing capacity demand and future growth to meet customer and community needs. Datacenter design for this project is advanced and is expected to provide optimal operational efficiencies."

Microsoft will construct the campus in two phases, and the entire approval and construction process is expected to take between four and five years.

Details about the size and capacity of the data centers have not been shared.

Mecklenburg County is already home to a number of Microsoft data centers; all located within Microsoft’s southern Virginia Regional Network Group (RNG).

The company filed for three data center campuses in the area between 2022 and 2023, including a 369-acre campus on land north of Butler Farm Road, a 132-acre site at 210 Tunstall Road that would feature three buildings, and a 259-acre parcel located at the Lakeside Commerce Park, again housing three buildings.

It also has a longstanding campus in Boydton, Mecklenburg County. The Boydton campus was first announced in 2010 and built at the cost of nearly $500 million – at the time hailed as the largest economic investment in Southern Virginia history. It was expanded repeatedly, first in 2011, then in 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016.

The company has two Azure cloud regions in Virginia – East and East 2 – as well as two government-dedicated zones known as US DoD East and US Gov Virginia.

Mecklenburg County is centrally located within an hour and a half of Richmond, Virginia, and Raleigh, North Carolina, and two and a half hours from Norfolk, Virginia.