NoVA’s Chuck Kuhn Buys 25-Acre Plot in Loudoun County, Va., for $60M

Parcel is entitled for a 360,000-square-foot data center

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Northern Virginia-based investor Chuck Kuhn is making more waves in the region after buying large tracts of land for large-scale development projects. 

This time it’s a 25.3-acre plot in Loudoun County, Va., that Kuhn purchased via his firm JK Land Holdings from Finmarc Management for $60 million. Kuhn plans to eventually redevelop the land into a 360,000-square-foot data center — adding yet another massive project in a region known as the king of such facilities.

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The site at 19886 Ashburn Road is currently home to a three-story, 110,000-square-foot commercial building and a roughly 80,000 industrial/R&D building that is fully leased as the global headquarters of cybersecurity company Telos

Telos has occupied the property since 1988, and Kuhn told Commercial Observer that he plans to honor the remainder of the company’s lease before redeveloping the parcel. Kuhn said he expects Telos to remain on site for the next three to five years, and that the site is already fully entitled for a data center project. 

“We’re staying busy [in Northern Virginia], that’s for sure,” Kuhn said. “We’re doing quite a bit in the region between data center, warehouse and flex development in Loudoun and Prince William, and other neighboring counties. And we’re in the market looking for and acquiring commercial and light industrial properties as well.”

Ryan Goeller of KLNB represented JK Land Holdings, and Rob Faktorow, Josh Greenberg, and Anna Faktorow of CBRE (CBRE) represented Finmarc in the sale. Finmarc acquired the site in 2019 for about $26.1 million, according to property records. 

More than 35 percent of the world’s hyperscale data centers — a term referring to IT systems able to scale to various levels of demand — are concentrated in Virginia, according to the Virginia Economic Development Partnership. More than 30 million square feet of data centers are operational in Loudoun County alone, with another 5 million square feet on the way, according to the Loudoun County Department of Economic Development

“[JK Land Holdings] acquired a property with appropriate entitlements in place to develop a new data center in a market that continues to experience supply constraints,” David Fink, Finmarc co-founder and principal, said in a statement. 

Kuhn and his firm are meanwhile under contract to buy a 225-acre site in Loudoun County, known as Waterside, from an affiliate of Gudelsky Group for an undisclosed sum. Yet Kuhn’s plans for the site, perhaps surprisingly, do not include data center construction.

The investor told CO that the site will likely be redeveloped into a mixed-use project, but that his firm is currently working with an urban planning designer and the local community to best determine how to use the land. 

Nick Trombola can be reached at NTrombola@commercialobserver.com.