DataBank is building a 480 MW data center campus near Dallas that will house as many as eight, two-story data centers—its largest project to date—as the company dramatically expands its capacity to meet the growing demand for artificial intelligence computing needs across the country.
The data center campus, already under construction on 292 acres of land in Red Oak, Texas, is the third land acquisition by the Dallas-based company in the past year.
The company’s combined expansion across more than 450 acres will provide 5.8 million square feet of data center space and 792 MW of critical IT load across three sites. The other locations are a 95-acre, 120 MW campus in Atlanta acquired in October 2023 and an 85-acre, 192 MW campus in Culpeper, Va., acquired in November 2023.
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The three new campuses will more than double DataBank’s portfolio. The company had 2.7 million square feet of data centers and 375 MW of power at its locations before the acquisitions. The company stated the expansion will position it to capitalize on AI-generated colocation demand for years to come. DataBank notes the three sites will be ideal locations for its enterprise, large technology, AI and hyperscale public cloud customers, while positioning the company for significant future growth.
Company expansion
Phase 1 of the Red Oak campus will feature four buildings and a 400 MW substation from Oncor that can deliver up to 240 MW of critical IT power with the ability to increase this in Phase 2 for a total of 480 MW across eight buildings. Plans call for the initial phase to be ready for service by the second quarter of 2026.
DataBank stated the facilities built at the Red Oak campus will leverage its Universal Data Hall Design, which will ensure capacity can be quickly deployed to meet the wide-ranging sustainability and performance requirements of all customers including enterprises, hyperscale cloud providers and emerging AI applications that need the highest possible power and cooling density.
DataBank notes Red Oak has become a major submarket in Dallas, attracting the world’s largest cloud and technology providers. DFW9 will be the company’s ninth facility in the Dallas market, where it also has its headquarters.
DataBank completed its third Dallas-area data center, DFW3 in Plano, Texas, in August 2018. That 145,000-square-foot facility has 13.5MW of critical IT capacity and features more than 72,000 square feet of raised floor space aimed at build-to-suit deployments.
The company currently has more than 65 data centers in more than 27 markets, 20 interconnection hubs and on-ramps to an ecosystem of cloud providers.
DataBank’s expansion across the U.S. has been aided by a $725 million credit facility secured in April. The capital is funding ongoing expansion in existing markets, including campuses in Dallas, Denver, New York, Minneapolis and Salt Lake City. It was supported by a group of 14 digital infrastructure banks, including TD Securities as the administrative agent and joint lead arranger. It came soon after DataBank issued $456 million in secured notes in February. The issuance qualified as a green bond based on the projects being refinanced meeting sustainability criteria for water conservation, carbon emissions reduction and power usage. DataBank’s goal is to be carbon neutral by 2030.