A big data center development in southeast Mesa is one step closer to fruition.
EdgeCore Digital Infrastructure received approval for a site plan modification on Jan. 24 from Mesa’s Planning and Zoning Board. The company recently secured financing to develop a 2.1 million-square-foot campus in Mesa.
The Denver-based data center developer will build three buildings on 43 acres at the southwest corner of Elliot Road and Everton Terrace. Each of the buildings will be three stories. The location is just to the north of EdgeCore’s existing data center and the two developments would collectively serve as a six-building “integrated flagship campus,” EdgeCore wrote in its application with the city.
A 320,000-square-foot Salt River Project substation is also in the cards for the site, according to EdgeCore’s application.
“The campus is planned to operate as a fully functional secure technology park serving cloud, enterprise, and larger scale colocation customers with reliable power, dense fiber connectivity, and high-efficiency energy and cooling systems requiring very low water usage,” EdgeCore said in its application.
Mesa’s Planning and Zoning board voted unanimously to approve the site plan modification through the consent agenda, which did not require discussion before the vote. EdgeCore is working with Withey Morris Baugh PLC’s Alex Hayes on its application with the city. The land is owned by DMB Mesa Proving Grounds LLC — an entity linked to Scottsdale-based DMB Associates Inc.
EdgeCore announced earlier this month that it secured $1.9 billion specifically for its campus. The company previously said that Atlanta-based Holder Construction is the general contractor. EdgeCore said it uses an air-cooled design and closed-loop chilled water system in its data centers to allow for optimal efficiency.
EdgeCore’s initial expansion into the market took place in 2018. EdgeCore built a $150 million, 180,000-square-foot building in Mesa’s Elliot Road Technology Corridor as part of a bigger data center campus. In 2023, EdgeCore announced it would build two new data center buildings in Mesa to support more than 200 megawatts of power after acquiring nearly 15 acres previously owned by Meta Platforms Inc.
In late 2023, EdgeCore brought on Bill Jabjiniak, the city of Mesa’s former director of economic development, to be its senior vice president of national community engagement.
In addition to Mesa, EdgeCore has a presence in Silicon Valley; Ashburn, Virginia; and Reno, Nevada. In 2022, EdgeCore was acquired by Partners Group, a Swiss private equity firm, for $1.2 billion.
While EdgeCore has big plans in the works in the Valley, several other data center players have their eyes on developing massive projects across the metro. Cushman & Wakefield told the Business Journal that there were 325 megawatts of new data center capacity under construction in the Valley at the end of 2023, while another 3,215 megawatts sit in the pipeline at some stage of planning and development.
Some of the big hyperscale users include Google, Meta Platforms Inc., QTS Realty Trust, and Vantage Data Centers. Earlier this year, Amazon submitted plans for two separate data centers totaling nearly 1 million square feet. Other players such as Dallas-based CyrusOne Inc., Virginia-based EdgeConneX and Connecticut-based Edged Energy have also filed plans to bring more than 2 million square feet of data centers to the East Valley.