Developer Chuck Kuhn on Verge of Buying 225-Acre NoVA Development Site
By Nick Trombola August 2, 2024 3:38 pm
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A deal to buy a sprawling 225-acre site in Northern Virginia is on the cusp of reality.
Local real estate mogul Chuck Kuhn, who is also founder and CEO of JK Moving Services, is under contract to acquire the Waterside development site from an affiliate of the Gudelsky Group for an as-yet undisclosed price, according to the Business Journal.
The Waterside is in Loudoun County, Va., near the newly opened Innovation Center Silver Line Metro station, and it is currently entitled for 3 million square feet of mixed-use development. The property includes the Chantilly Crushed Stone quarry, which Gudelsky also owns.
The Waterside property has a history of courting, and being courted, for big acquisition deals in recent years. Loudoun County and the State of Virginia in 2018 pitched the site in their joint bid for Amazon’s HQ2 — though the e-commerce giant ultimately split its second headquarters between Crystal City, Va., and Queens, New York.
Four years later, in 2022, the Washington Commanders offered to buy the site when the professional football team was on the hunt for a new stadium site, but were ultimately turned down by Gudelsky.
Kuhn has purchased and sold land in Loudoun County and Prince William County in recent years for data center development. That includes a 124-acre site in Prince William that he traded to Microsoft in March for a cool $465.5 million, after paying just $47 million for it in 2020.
Yet Kuhn’s goal for Waterside, should the deal go through, does not appear to include data center development. Kuhn will submit a concept plan to Loudoun County later this quarter, he told the Business Journal, which will include residential, retail, stand-alone flex, light industrial and some entertainment and office development.
Kuhn and Gudelsky did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Loudoun County officials appear to have less and less patience for data center projects these days, anyway. The county’s Board of Supervisors indicated last month that they are likely to deny BlackChamber Group and Fairfield Residential’s proposal for a mixed-use data center and affordable housing project in Sterling, Va.
Loudoun County lawmakers earlier this year also began considering legislation that would restrict where data centers can be built in the county, as well as their looks, while also requiring them to develop their own power supplies rather than directly hooking up to local power grids.
Nick Trombola can be reached at NTrombola@commercialobserver.com.
