The largest data center operator in Loudoun County is about to get even bigger.
Digital Realty broke ground May 9 on a major campus expansion of their Devin Shafron property in Ashburn at the intersection of Loudoun County Parkway and the Dulles Greenway.
Digital Realty, a company with more than 100 properties throughout the world in Europe, North America, Singapore and Australia, has invested more than $80 million into the project.
As the largest data center operator in Loudoun County, Digital Realty has almost 1 million square feet of space. Most of their properties are concentrated in the Loudoun County Parkway area known as “Data Center Alley.”
According to Assistant Director of the Loudoun County Department of Economic Development Buddy Rizer, the Digital Realty properties are leased to other companies, including ecommerce, financial, cloud computing and government clients. The new building is, in large part, pre-leased. However, Digital Realty doesn’t release client names.
Rizer notes that the expansion will greatly benefit the county by bringing more tax revenue.
“The benefits of Digital Realty’s expansion are ‘that it brings more tax revenue to Loudoun County and reaffirms our status as a premier location for data centers,” Rizer said. “In addition, the expanding number of data centers makes Loudoun County an attractive business location to other types of companies that would benefit from being in close proximity to data centers and the type of workforce they employ.”
The construction of the two-story, 214,000-square-foot building, which will ultimately house 10 data centers, will create several jobs for the county as well.
An additional 18,000 square feet of office space will support 60 or more employees and the construction of the actual building will add 180 temporary jobs to the county.
Upon its completion, a dozen permanent on-site jobs will be created for both security and engineering personnel.
Rizer also highlighted Digital Realty for their advancements in sustainable technology, which will be incorporated into the new building.
“Digital Realty is at the forefront of sustainable technologies, particularly in the cooling of the servers,” Rizer said. “With a two-story data center, they’ve developed a system that uses the efficiencies of air flow to reduce overall energy needs.”
According to the news release, the facility will incorporate the industry’s best practices when it comes to energy efficiency and its design incorporates air-side economization, which will lower the amount of energy used to cool the data centers located in the building.
Loudoun County Board of Supervisors Chairman Scott York (R), knows the completion of this project only further exemplifies Loudoun County’s choke hold as a prime data center location.
“More than 50 percent of the world’s Internet traffic flows through Loudoun County data centers every day,” York said in a news release. “With our immense fiber optics infrastructure, and energy rates 28 percent below the national average, Loudoun is the premier east coast data center location, with more than eight million square feet either constructed or in development.”
Construction for the new expansion is expected to be completed in 14 months.
“At full build-out of their new campus, Digital Realty will have more than two million square feet in Loudoun County,” Rizer said.
I was wondering what they were building there.
More DRT space is awesome!... but all the facts listed in the article wrong… well not the reporter York.
“More than 50 percent of the world’s Internet traffic flows through Loudoun County data centers every day” ... I actually snorted a laugh when I read that. Don’t get me wrong NOVA is a major peering hub, but 50% of the world? Ever hear of some little old places like Amsterdam, New York, London, Frankfort, and hey lets through in a little South America in there. Miami. Thats just the top of my head and doesn’t even touch Asia.
“75% of datacenter capacity in mid atlantic region” . I’d be curious to see a study on that. Loudoun and the surrounding counties have a huge amount of space and .. and with many players, with both public and private data centers. And VA has a great nexus of price, fiber routes, and peering. And Mid Atlantic cutting off at VA I think thats very possible.
Data centers are not mass employment opportunities, unless you are a janitor. But they are great for county taxes. They are big revenue sources with little demand on government services and road infrastructure. So the more centers, the better.
As a system administrator, I heartily approve of more data centers being built.
On the other hand, I suspect most of the jobs are “sit around from 8pm to 8am and hit the power button when someone asks you to” system administration jobs.
Location:Ashburn, Virginia, United States United States (.us)
Hostname:usqas01.sixxs.net
Established:2009-06-15
Operational:2 years, 10 months, 21 days
SixXSd version:v4
Status:Up
Heartbeat support:Yes
AYIYA support:Yes
Multicast support:No
m6bone connected:No
Active Tunnels:815
Active Subnets¹:241
Available Subnets¹:271
Public:Yes
What’s the reason any national/international company locates where they do? Money/cost to operate. York said it - low(er) electric costs, whcih are huge in this field, and access to fiber networks. Quality employees is very low on the list, because people will drive however long for a good job (see Loudoun roads). Tax incentives and rates (both local and state) are also highly impactful. Vehicle access, for these uses, is minimal. Those are things that combine to create a nexus of data centers here. How much of this can be credited to any one Board of Supervisors?
Minimal.
tired of corrupt politics - please confirm that you are saying that Lori Waters, poster (some would also say pin-up) girl for the modern Republican woman, was going to be beat by Buona in an intra-party battle for the Supervisor slot?
ROFL at the OpenBand comment. OpenBand is not a network provider and DLR is exclusively a carrier neutral facility (as are all the big Ashburn datacenter companies).
One thing that this article got wrong; DLR is not the biggest in Loudoun. They’re the largest in the world. It’s a REIT vs. a commercial operator of datacenters, i.e. a real estate investment trust that builds and leases buildings. Dupont-Fabros is the other big REIT in Loudoun - they have the multi-story buildings off Smiths Switch. Equinix is a commercial player off Filigree Ct.
Amazing that in a 10sq mile area, you have nearly 75% of the capacity of datacenters in the Mid-Atlantic. All in Loudoun County.
Yes, Mr. Burton liked to list himself as (I). I think York did that too for one term. But in the American world of politics, you are D or R, and Mr. Burton was closer to a D than an R. But I appreciate the fact-check. And my adding the party of the 3 incumbents that ran, and lost, was immaterial, I just added it for flavor to show that I was NOT trying to make a leftist response.
As for Mr./Ms. Ashburn Man - thanks for trying to guess my party affiliation, which you are wrong on, and has nothing to do with me pointing out that the 2011 election did not occur like you wrote - “The previous Board did not do anything, probably why they were shut out 9 zip” - I just pointed out that you were not even CLOSE to getting it right, because you were too busy trying to make a smart-aleck response. Not unlike you did when in 7th grade, trying to impress your peers. “Einstein’s like you…”, yeah, that is definitely something my teenager would say. Congrats for having the mindset of a child.
I might add—Mr. Burton is still an independent!
Fact man: You are mistaken about Mr. Burton. He was an independent, not a Democrat.
No ignance here, your side got beat like a drum! probably because of Einstein’s like you….
@fact man, had the 4 that did not run, run, they would have lost. They new that. But who cares. Just like th 9 current ones will be voted out if they give in to Metro and OpenBand
Thank the Board for “attracting” this? No.
They were already here and the land they need was available. That is why they are in Loudoun in the first place. You can’t find a parcel like that in Fairfax. Loudoun would need to screw up real bad to drive someone with that amount of previous investment elsewhere.
You don’t need Metro for a data center. Very few servers commute. A million square foot data center may employ 50 people.
I like the fact that we build commercial tax base and very few new students for our bloated school system.
I’m waiting for people to complain about noise or pollution from standby generators. Or how the big warehouse like buildings are too ugly
Ashburn Man, chomp on this when you review your 9:55am post:
- 2 of the previous Board’s 9 were re-elected - York and Delgaudio.
- 4 of the previous Board’s 9 - Miller (D), Kurtz (D), Buckley (R), Waters(R) - chose not to run, thus, were not defeated.
- the 3 that lost - Burton(D) to Clark (R), Burk(D) to Reid(R), McGimsey(D) to Williams(R) - were all Democrats.
I wish I could rub your nose in your ignorance…
Data centers usually take up a lot of space but very few people actually work there. So probably doesn’t add any new jobs. On the plus side won’t affect traffic and the county receives taxes.
I wonder if the BOS will convince them to use OpenBand as their provider?
Oh yes, this is all because of these wonderful new supervisors!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It has nothing to do with them already being here, I’m sure.
Funny thing is no metro stop at loudoun county parkway and greenway….Unless you jump.
The previous Board did not do anything, probably why they were shut out 9 zip…pretty sure this was approved under this Board, I remember the press release of three new data centers approved by this Board a couple months back…
Ummm…this was zpproved by the previous board.
Lie lie lie
Up up up
OMG! How did this happen with the lying 9-0 republican board and Ken “Traffic ticket” Reid.
Good to see this Board bringing business to Loudoun…
OMG! How did this happen without Metro?
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