Amazon Web Services has bought a 700,000 sq ft (65,000 sq m) plot that was previously set to be turned into a 60MW data center, the Silicon Valley Business Journal reports.
AWS paid $100m for the land at 2305 Mission College Blvd, Santa Clara, in December. On the site lies a 358,000 sq ft (33,000 sq m) two-story building once used by General Dynamics as an R&D facility.
PGIM Real Estate (formerly Prudential) purchased the land from a joint venture with Kinship Capital and Pearlmark Real Estate Partners for $95 million in 2014.
In 2018, real estate firm SSV Properties was tasked with redeveloping this building on behalf of PGIM Real Estate. SSV was to build a two-story, 495,000 sq ft (46,000 sq m) data center in its place, with an architectural review undertaken by Aligned Data Centers.
According to local records, the project included the installation of 120 diesel-fueled generators to provide 75MW of backup power and a new 90MV substation. With Amazon now the owner of the site, its plans may differ.
During the deal, Amazon used a limited company, KTJ LLC, to obfuscate its identity.
Should Amazon go through with building a data center on the site, then it will be the first facility in the Santa Clara area to be outright owned by the tech giant. WikiLeaks in 2018 revealed that Amazon relied on Equinix and Digital Realty leases in the Bay Area.
AWS was not able to comment in time of publication, but DCD will update this article when more is revealed.
Virginian buy up
Amazon has been buying up land elsewhere in the US. Recently it purchased a vacant lot in Chantilly, Virginia, for more than $70m.
Up till now, the 4,360,000 sq ft (405,000 sq m) location was mostly vacant. But a portion, local records say, was used as a vegetative waste facility for mulch.
This purchase, first reported by the Washington Business Journal, follows Amazon’s recent $53m acquisition of a 2,500,000 sq ft (230,000 sq m) site near Chantilly and a $118m transaction to buy two other plots amounting to 4,000,000 sq ft (364,000 sq m).
